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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."
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.
Why? What will Netscape 7.2 be that Mozilla 1.7 is not?
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!)
Join the Free Software Foundation
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.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
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.
Tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking? And your last line is what is causing a lot of these anti-monopolistic lawsuits against MS.
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.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
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
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.
I don't recall the MPL exactly, but isn't Netscape required to release the source code if this would become true?
Quantum hacker.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
http://saveie6.com/
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!!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
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.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
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!
Simpsons 11:11: Lisa: They must have programmed it to eliminate the competition - Bart: You mean like microsoft?
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.People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
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.
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
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.
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.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
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.
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
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
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.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
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.
and don't forget wonderful IE-only sites like
windowsupdate.microsoft.com
Steven v.
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
"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.
Engineering and the Ultimate
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.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
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.
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.
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.
NO CARRIER
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.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
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.