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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.
Just as good software should be modularized and decentralized, a web browser should be just that: a secure configurable and stable html viewer. What's wrong with external video and audio players? Even flash sites could be viewed that way.
They are mostly games and fancy bloated intros mostly anyway.
This is getting to be annoying, reading all of these browser wars articles. This one happens to be good, and just makes me think - how can we, the developers of the web, stp this from happening?
Simply by NOT USING new MS technology if it alienates anyone on any platform.
It's up to us.
Microsoft is attempting to reinvent the Internet with it's .NET initiative. This initiative will include MS Specific code for web services, which will undoubtedly break interoperability between platforms, and between browsers.
Microsoft wants you to use the MS Internet(trademark pending), and will make certain that HTML and XML become irrelevant. Windows.Forms is the future, unfortunately, and because they control the specs, they will win the next round of browser wars.
Gee, why are the pages so small? The printer version is much easier to read. Anyway, for the latest word on mozilla's support of css3, don't miss Anne Van Kesteren's report available since Wednesday May 19th, 2004.
Beyond the Foundation are many other Mozilla-enabled browsers such as Konqueror
I stopped reading here. Well a bit down there's this
Non-Mozilla browsers such as Safari and Opera
Huh?
I fought the corporate America, and the corporate America bought the law.
Show a non-geek firefox (no, not the movie, they'll never forgive you)
;)
So far every person I have shown firefox to has installed it and started to use it, even my cousin's kids. The older one even thinks that Linux is cool, which came as a bit of a shock to me
Even Copernicus only got it marginally better than Ptolemy but it was better ENOUGH to serve for those who ehanced it, like Kepler. The point is no one really cares how great it is, it has to be only good enough to be absorbed.
And on a practical level Mozilla is far slower on older machines which is a huge disadvantage.
The next disadvantage is that you have to DO SOMETHING, e.g install it - you geeks would be amazed what a huge problem that is for 99% of mankind.
This is as good an example of a non sequitur as I have ever seen. No doubt you would be appalled if I said that your comment was not worth discussing because you don't know the difference between "its" and "it's".
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
All we care about is which one works.
For some reason I don't seem to be able to get away from IE. Whatever the reason there are still many (important) sites out there that still just don't work (properly) with non-IE browsers.
In general though, I will use Opera on win32, Safari on OS X and Fire on Linux as my preferred browsers.
That does not not mean that I don't ALWAYS try and use IE (on OS X and win32) when I find that the others still don't quite make the grade in site compatibility.
Same as the silly Beta vs. VHS war. The one that wins is the one that has the most support, and is therefore the better (out of a consumer point of view) browser.
And I think that's all that really needs saying.
PS: In my opinion, the best browsers are:
1) Safari (much faster than Opera on any platform)
2) Opera
3) Mozilla
4) IE (If it had tabbed browsing, it would be better than Mozilla!)
The browser wars of the 90's are over. Nobody is "selling" their browsers for their proprietary features. This is why you don't see many (well, not that many) IE-only pages any more - people want to be compliant.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer is too old. Features that almost every other browser has, like tabbed browsing, skins, etc. are not included, and there are so many holes it's like Swiss cheese.
Microsoft isn't pursuing it because there's no money in the browser market. As the article says, Apache is free, HTTP is free, most browsers are free, PHP, Perl, HTML, MySQL, and almost everything Internet-related is completly free (not always as in speech, but free nonetheless). Microsoft has no motivation to make an amazing browser, because it doesn't get them anything but a name (which they already have).
Over the next few years, the only good browsers will be coming from groups like Mozilla who aren't in a money-making business at all and only want to have a great, stable, secure, fast, and standards-compliant browser. They don't want to necessarily dominate the browser market (though I'm sure they'd love that) - they just want to make a good product.
That is why the browser wars are over. The good browsers will rise, the bad ones will fall - and the good browsers will only come from developers who are in it for "the cause" and not the money.
-- If you can read this, you are too close to my signature.
Ugh...another buzzword and acronym-filled article. For instance:
It's the presence of standardized data in web content--whether current standards such as XHTML or some yet-unknown future standards, perhaps based on XUL--guaranteeing that the web will remain a global commons, an information highway, and a free marketplace.
XHTML is a reformulation of HTML in XML; XUL is an XML-based language that describes a computer application's graphical user interface. Not the same thing. But anyway, onto the larger pointof hysteria:
Make no mistake: Microsoft really hates the web.
Microsoft doesn't hate the Web. The Web has created a huge market for Microsoft in personal computers. Tons of PC sales are rooted in people wanting a computer to examine the "Internet" and "Web" things they've been hearing so much about. PC sales = Windows sales = Office sales. Microsoft doesn't hate the Web.
When Microsoft tempts these organizations and communities to Longhorn, the web suffers the death of a thousand cuts. Over here will be the standards-based web, with a gradually shrinking set of web sites.
This statement assumes the basic workflow:
Step 1: Develop Longhorn with Web-tainting features
Step 2: Release Longhorn
Step 3: ??????
Step 4: Profit! (and dominate Web)
No. First, you have to ensure that people will upgrade. Longhorn will be coming off the longest active life cycle of a Windows product ever; Microsoft will have to demonstrate in spades that Longhorn is worth the upgrade price, elsewise it will take at least 3-4 years of OEMs shipping Longhorn on all new PCs before it starts to attain ubiquity. Given the current ~2006 release date for Longhorn, that's 2009-2010. A lot can happen technologically during that time. Second, this assumes that the Web won't adapt to Longhorn-specific features, which it almost certainly will (and has adapted to hostile technologies every time before, often by marginalizing them). Third, it assumes that the same disparity between IE and all other browsers will remain basically static. Macs continue to sell well. Mozilla/Firefox/Camino continue to grow in popularity. XML continues to grow in popularity (which IE has significant problems with). Etc. Oh, and likely Longhorn-specific Web stuff will require server-side support; not likely to be included in Apache, which is the majority web server by a significant margin.
So I really don't buy the author's arguments here. I have no doubt MS will continue to taint the Web with MS-specific features, and I have no doubt that the Web will shrug it off. That's okay - Microsoft has other businesses. They're not now (and never have) put all their eggs in one basket.
We shouldn't allow Microsoft to take over the net. When doctoring your none-geeks friends machine, simply remove all MS-conspiracy related trash you can find
Have you ever tried removing something from someone's machine? They complain enough if you get rid of their Bonzi Buddy or Comet Cursor, let alone their browser.
Seriously though, removing their programs is not the way to go, and will just make people annoyed. The reaction you get if you introduce them to Firefox or Opera as a 'cool new browser' is totally different to what you get for lecturing them with your tinfoil hat on. If you give people a better alternative, they will (probably) use it, but if you try to preach about W3C standards they'll just ignore you.
I run firebird and IE, and while i use firebird in some cases and it *does* have a number of neat features and IE *does* have a number of annoyances; i could just as easily reverse the terms "firebird" and "IE" in the beginning half of this sentence and I'd be just as accurate.
IE, by the way, is massively more sophisticated than firebird from a developer's perspective. I can embed IE inside of a windows program transparently. This provides a great many USEFUL features that mozilla can't even dream of as yet.
but no, what are mere facts compared to your baldfaced assertions.
Of course that is not a 'plain fact'. IE does a lot of things that Mozilla doesn't (form entry isn't broken, for example). On the other hand I'm sure everyone here can name plenty things Mozilla does that IE doesn't. Mozilla may be better in the opinion of the author, and it may be better at the things that matter more to the author, but to state it's superiority as fact is a perfect example of ignorance.
The fact that the author can't spot the difference between KHTML and Gecko shows he is no position to be comparing browsers.
Face it...who do we really have to blame for Microsoft's domination here? Back when the Web really started to get on its feet, we geeks and technical users were the early adopters and were the ones who showed everyone else the Internet. And we dumped Netscape like a cheating girlfriend when Microsoft came out with something a little better. We are the ones who made Internet Explorer popular. If you still used Netscape, or "Nutscrape" as it was dubbed, you were laughed at. And now, the number of casual Internet users far outweighs the techies and geeks; it's going to be almost impossible to reverse this trend.
I honestly don't think people care about the browser war. People will generally use whatever is closest and works, and a smaller percentage will pay attention to performance/utility details and thus use the better product.
I remember, back in the 90's, shaking my head even at the term 'browser war'. It seemed ludicrous, if only because the idea that there could ONLY BE ONE BROWSER FOR EVERYONE was childish. This isn't Dune spice, folks.
The author certainly has a point, regarding the upcoming fight for standards-compliance. However, 'standards-compliance' is a bit of a canard; no one knows enough about the standards to know who's 'standards' are the real (read: good) ones.
And sentences like "[o]ne of the purposes of Longhorn is to destroy the web as we know it." aren't going to engage anyone in a rational debate.
You like your browser? Think it's King-Sh*t? Then tell people and switch them over - but then let them ultimately choose to keep using it or not.
M2c
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
The article is not about what makes a good browser. The article is about the treat that Microsoft poses to the web as we know it.
The reasoning is that Microsoft hates the web, because its openness makes it hard or impossible to extract money from it. Therefore, they will develop proprietary extensions to it which will provide more convenience and a better user experience. These extensions will only work with Microsoft software, but will be adopted by developers, safe in the knowledge that virtually everyone uses or can use that software anyway. The traditional, open web will die, because all the hot stuff is happening in the MS-controlled sector.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Come on, this guy is posting articles about web browsers and technology trends yet makes two technology-related mistakes on one page. Five minutes with Google could have told him he was wrong.
I hate the statement: "Dvorak superiority is a myth." The ergonomics of the Dvorak keyboard are far superior to Qwerty. Economists are in no position to debate that superiority.
In terms of the cost of switching to Dvorak then Qwerty probably has the advantage. Replaceing all those keyboards and retraining typeists would be a huge expence for little economic gain. I am suspecious of any study that shows a huge productivity gain from switching to Dvorak. Dvorak users may type faster, but most keyboard users I know are not limited by their typeing speed.
Certain economists like those who wrote the Qwerty article above hate the Dvorak keyboard. Dvorak shows that the market does not always choose the most advanced (high tech) products. There are some theories of a free market economy that rely on the market always chooseing the best. Unfortunately the Dvorak keyboard delivers quite a blow to these theories. If these economists were scientists they would rework their theories.
The Dvorak and Qwerty keyboards can be added to a list of technologies that show that a partial solution that is out first will have an advantage over a perfect solution. It is an example of The Rise of "Worse is Better". Backwards compatibility is part of the same picture.
Really, I think that many people avoids using replacements for IE just for the fact that one or
more pages doesn't render (like my employeers intranet... sigh).
For the mozilla project it would be a trivial technical solution to implement (on Windows
ofcourse) but it would make the browser experience so much nicer. A page that doesn't render? Open in IE.
Actually, when I think of it, its probably fully possible to embedd IE's renderwidget inside a
Mozilla/Firefox window (advantage: all bookmarks are kept in the same place). Add the preferences
option "Sites that should always be viewed with IE" and never bother with that small incompatibility again.
Since Mozilla is the underdog (and OSS) there really isn't any prestige or pride to lose from this.
And it's asshats like you that are the bulk of the problem. Code to the standards.
Granted, I realize how difficult it can be to follow that simple directive and still make money as a web developer. I was one from 1998 to 2000. The Browser Wars are exactly why I got out of it. But if you want to stay in that career and make money, your two choices are to do what you know to be right, or be an asshat (see above).
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Unfortunately I can't read it, because the stylesheet specifies a foreground colour for the body text but no background colour, so I get black on black.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
I came across this site showcasing graphic design with simple, standards-compliant CSS. Just thought it might be of interest.
Warning, the Emergency Rant Sequence has been initiated...
Lemme also throw my .02 in here (and this is not in response to anything in the parent post) to say that I would love to see every browser conform to a set of common standards because I don't have any idea what I'm doing.
I'm sure it's tough for web-professionals, but it's absolutely fucking maddening for non-technical hobbyists like me who are trying to cobble pages together despite our ignorance. HTML for Dummies is open in your lap, 6 Firefox tabs are open to a different reference or Google search result, you've got a tab for the page you're working on, a window for editing your CSS, plus a window for editing the HTML of the page itself, Saturn finally aligns with Jupiter in the third house of Aries rising and lo and behold your page looks great - the boxes line up, the text is placed correctly, and the images look good - so you flip over to check it in I.E. and EVERYTHING IS FUCKING BROKEN AND YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHY! .
I know that in the best of all possible worlds I would have a full and complete understanding of every rule guiding the implementation of CSS and HTML, comprehensive knowledge of the way that each browser will respond to all aspects of the code, and the computer science and programming background necessary to write and implement the 14 ugly hacks necessary to make a relatively simple fucking page look decent in multiple browsers, but until that day: can't we all just get along?!?!?! Get it together, people. Please, Bill, make a browser that conforms. Do it for the children.
The Dalai LLama
...concludes this test of the Emergency Rant System...
My sig could be your sig!
From a *web* developer's perspective, Firefox is far more sophisticated than IE. IE's CSS support is abysmal. It can't seem to get something as simple as fixed positioning or negative margins right (I won't even go into its floats and box model). Other standards are even less supported: for example, if you use IE6 to view an XHTML 2.0 page, it asks you where you want to save the file. The only way to judge how technically sophisticated a web browser is is by seeing how well it does what web browsers do--which is display data in standard formats the way the standard says it's supposed to be displayed.
(Plus, Gecko is just as easy to embed as IE, and it's cross-platform.)
You may think you need to know, but you'd be wrong. Simply make use of open standards and you'll be fine.
e.g.
http://www.tigertrackgps.com/
Doesn't bloody work because half the site is written in javascript which attempts to detect my web browser, because the version number is below 4, I'm apparently not allowed to see their site and I've chosen one of their competitors instead.
Deleted
Thats fine as many corps that I code for have managers using non MS browsers. Your way may be fine if you are selling to the direct public but for corporate sales you had better be standards compliant. Even if you sell to the public directly how much harder is it to make your site standards compliant? It's not in fact it's easier. I will wrap up my arguement with the fact if I were your manager you would be in hot water for cutting 5% of sales right off the top.
Got hosting
Maybe because its still built on IE, which is not the best browser, only the most popular? Sticking a peice of gum on a giant security hole wont close it, you'll just lose your gum. :(
So your saying that the browser is safe if you refrain from using it? Avoiding sites is not a security model. Who is in charge of selecting sites that are safe to use? This is just ridiculous.
Got hosting
> It is Gecko without the Mozilla GUI bloat.
That version is called Firefox.
LAZY! The herd mentality of 95% of browsers will be able to view my work and screw the rest. Well do what you like but it's not that hard to code for 100% of web browsers.
Not to mention not all internet related software are browsers. What of search engine spiders? That fancy flash menu will not get you high page ranking on most search engines.
Not to mention anything that IE can do can be done openly if you are creative and not opposed to learning a new technology. If your only reason for going IE only is so that you can continue to design with FrontPage well I will be seeing you soon in the unemployment line as your coding skills will suffer. How employable will YOU be if your current job goes bye bye! Don't do it only for your boss but for yourself go standards compliant.
Awww what the hell I don't care about Karma.
Got hosting
Look. Lets drop it. Obiously you people don't even know what a good web page looks like so i'm going to direct you to the tutorial of someone who does. (Warning: This site is flash... it'd have to be wouldn't it) Anyway, armed with the advice of this web guru I'm sure we can all make the internet an even more overcrowded, useless dump of misinformation (W3C be damned). Now lets get bloggin'!!!
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
No. I'm not saying that.
Your statement is an overexageration.
My complaint is that the author claims that the web messed up his computer in an hour, because he was using IE on low security, and engaging in casual web browsing. This seems unrealistic.
I suspect that his claims are used primarily to enhance his point (which, I might add, is heavily biased towards the Mozilla foundation).
I aknowledge that it's possible for this to happen. I've fixed many a computer with gain, porn commander, or "Freewebsearch+++" installed because IE is fast and loose with what it allows to be installed. However, almost all of the time, the offending application was picked up from an untrustworthy source.
Users should be aware of the websites they go to, just as they are aware of the people that they sleep with, the attachments that they open, and the applications that they install.
Microsoft has been retooling the web for sometime now. It has worked well for Microsoft because pretty much no one is paying attention to what they are doing. Since the web is one of the few things MS cannot buy outright they have had to use other methods to gain control of it and for the most part it has worked flawlessly. Since most users will use IE on the web adding features to its content creation tools that create sites that only work with IE under windows is something that will sneak under the radar of most users.
Web standards are the last thing the MS wants. If every browser worked the same that would not give MS an advantage. If the web pages that your business relies on works only with IE and under Windows what will your business have to use to get its work done? This fact has not been lost on Microsoft and day after day many sites are becoming MS only sites where you need IE or IE and Windows to make use of the services the page offers.
Microsoft only needs to add more MS only features to its content creation and delivery tools to shut out the competition. Next time you are on a Mac or surfing with Linux or using Mozilla under Windows and you cannot access a site do not blame the web designer for bad site design. More than likely MS will be involved with that site in one way or another. They have already done a proof of concept when they torpedoed Opera browsers on their own site before Opera exposed them.
Oh yes, I agree with you (and see my response to the other fellow who replied in this thread. It may have been a troll by its own admission, but it brought up a good point.) The days of closed systems like AOL (and Compu$erve, and Prodigy, and dozens of others that never made the big time) came and went, but between Longhorn's potential for OS lock-in, and "Trusted Computing", the bad old days of the internet "haves" and "have-nots" are likely to make a comeback.
:(
I remember when either you were an AOLer, or you weren't, and even email in and out of their closed system was an adventure. AOL was, in its heyday, very much a battle of haves vs have-nots (tho which category one fell into was a matter of perspective). Fragmentation of internet tools, and of what is accessable by whom using what, would play right into a future resurgence of internet haves and have-nots.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?