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Browser Wars Mark II

Nigel McFarlane writes "I have no life (humour) other than to write articles about Web technology and open technologies, and the way they mediate, enable and transform our public places and our participation opportunities. Mostly I write about Mozilla and Linux, but my latest effort is an attempted wake-up call over Web standards and the future of the Web." Self-deprecation aside, it's a decent article that summarizes the stakes well.

14 of 418 comments (clear)

  1. Konqueror is KHTML not gecko by Kyro · · Score: 5, Informative

    Quote from article: "Beyond the Foundation are many other Mozilla-enabled browsers such as Konqueror and K-Meleon"

    I was under the impression that Konqueror used KHTML and not gecko...

    --
    save the GNUs!
  2. Re:One browser that deserves mentioning is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Safari uses KHTML. When khtml-win32 is ready you can get back to us.

  3. Konqueror/Mozilla by StormReaver · · Score: 4, Informative

    Konqueror is Mozilla-enabled only in the sense that Konqueror implements the Netscape plugin architecture, as does Mozilla. Konqueror does not use the Mozilla rendering engine (Gecko), but rather uses its own engine (khtml).

  4. Javascript Browser Sniffer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    A little off-topic, but it may be useful:

    If you need to know which browser is your visitor using, I recommend you to use this Javascript Browser Sniffer instead of Mozilla's one. JsBrwSniff is far better: it supports 30 browsers, 14 browsing engines, 25 operating systems, 6 and detects the Flash plugin. It can work on the client-side or on the server-side.

    Next version is supposed to find also Adobe SVG plug-in and Adobe Acrobat plug-in.

    There's a demo here.

  5. Re:WTF? by r00zky · · Score: 2, Informative

    1.- Konqueror identifies itself as "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3.2; Linux) (KHTML, like Gecko)"
    2.- The kdebindings3-mozilla package description that comes with my distribution states that "The Mozilla WEB browser can used inside of the Konqueror. Usually the KHTML class is used to browse the WEB."

    Haven't tried the 2nd since i like Konqueror/KHTML more than Mozilla...

    --
    I'm a chainsmokin' alcoholic sociopath, so-ci-o-path
  6. Quotes about the Urban Legend by Haxial · · Score: 2, Informative
    Here are a couple of websites I found about the Betamax vs VHS Urban Legend:

    "Speaking of quality, you will often hear Betamax fans claiming that Beta was technically better than VHS. However, on closer inspection this turns out to be something of a myth; an advantage Beta might have had was quickly matched by VHS, and anyway was only apparent using sophisticated test equipment. In fact, independant tests of picture quality at the time actually put VHS ahead, the scores over four tests being VHS: 2, Beta: 1, No difference: 1. This urban legend probably reflects Sony's marketing rather than any actual quantifiable difference. "
    -- http://www.hypernova.co.uk/total_rewind/sidebars/F _beta.htm

    "In any case, for a year Sony had the VCR market to itself, selling 30,000 Betamax VCRs in the US. [2] But when JVC came out with the VHS format VCR in 1976, the stage was set for the format wars. JVC had a machine that already doubled Sony's recording time of one hour, and that difference would prove crucial."
    -- http://www.tafkac.org/products/beta_vs_vhs.html

  7. Dood, it's called FIREFOX by Mr.+McD · · Score: 5, Informative

    Uh, I can embed Mozilla in the same number of Windows Apps as I can with IE. Furtermore, I can embed Mozilla inside of a Linux or Mac OS X program. This provides a great many USEFUL features that IE can only dream of. Oh wiat, thats right, they canceled IE on Mac OS X, so they don't care! Add to that that FIREFOX provides a consistent feature set across multiple operatating systems. I guess I really can't see your point.

  8. Re:Getting to be Annoying by bhtooefr · · Score: 2, Informative

    I agree that Netscape tried this, but here's what happened:

    Netscape was trying to rush new technologies out, no matter whether it broke standards or stability. This was to compete against Microsoft and others. Because of the feature set, it did attract many.

    Microsoft, in the other corner, saw Netscape getting popular in the earlier years, and scrambled to get something that WORKED out. They then bundled it with Windows - it was a whole lot easier to use IE, which you already had, than Netscape. It was lacking until version 3, and it was a whole lot more stable - they were trying to show superiority over Netscape, even if that meant not cloning some of their features. However, they did slip some extensions that were only IE-supported in.

    IE4 and NS4 came out, and IE's stability took a nosedive, but so did Netscape's. If IE crashed, it brought down Windows. Netscape would crash by double-clicking a link (I can reproduce that, too), but the system remained up. IMO, IE's rendering engine and UI were superior, so IE won the browser war on features, quality, and availability. Then, security wasn't a concern, but it would be when IE5 came out. As you know, Mozilla (and then Netscape 6) came out, and IE had competition again. Opera also became a threat to Microsoft at version 6.

  9. Re:Getting to be Annoying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    yeah, i got lectured by the IT department (people too stupid to get real comp sci jobs) because i downloaded and installed firefox and its not on the approved software list. apparently they have this list to stop people installing software that poses a security risk to the organisation. i value my job, but if i didnt i would have been screaming hypocricy at them, preeching security then making us use IE and windows

  10. micro-browsers by whitroth · · Score: 2, Informative

    "Browser wars"? So, when will we see the efforts to create micro-browsers, suitable for viewing slashdot or news.google.com on the 1.5"x2" screen on my cell phone...and when will the manufacturers give us a magnifying glass, so we can read more than 12 letters at a time....

    mark "and the market-droids who decided I
    wanted a Web browser on my cell phone
    will make a great telescope - a lens
    in either ear, and hard vacuum in
    between, just like Bush & co...."

  11. Re:I'm sure this is an excellent article... by typhoonius · · Score: 3, Informative

    What (apparently crappy) browser are you using?

    They're called cascading style sheets because they cascade; any modern browser lets the user use a custom style sheet in the absence of or to override author styles (and both IE and Mozilla let the user set the default background and foreground color for pages). My custom style sheet in Mozilla disables blink and marquee tags, for instance (and it's the underpinning of the FlashBlock extension).

    If this site's designers ran the style sheet through the W3C's free CSS validator service, it would have warned them to always specify both a background and a foreground color together for this exact reason.

  12. Correction by 42forty-two42 · · Score: 2, Informative
    Beyond the Foundation are many other Mozilla-enabled browsers such as Konqueror and K-Meleon.

    Konqueror is based on KHTML, not Mozilla.
  13. Re:Start Selling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    The Mozilla Foundation will not allow this. You _can_ order Mozilla/Firepants etc on cd, but only straight from the mozilla foundation (others aren't allowed to to protect the trademarks). The profits are pumped back into the mozilla foundation to pay for hosting/development (which imo is much mroe useful than pissing people off with endless adds - especially since word of mouth is much more effective anyway).