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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.
K-Meleon for Windows. It is Gecko without the Mozilla GUI bloat. Kind of like Safari is to the Mac.
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.
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!
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.
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).
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.
http://reason.com/9606/Fe.QWERTY.shtml
In summary, the main reason why VHS succeeded was that it was superior because it had longer recording times. Betamax was crippled because the original tapes could not hold a whole movie.
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.
Maybe im missing something but it seems pretty simple that a good browser should:
a) Support 3WC standards to the max
b) Have a separate and intelligent module for rendering badly coded websites that dont follow specs
c) Use the philosphy that the user gets the final say in what happens on their computer - if they dont want extra windows opening etc then thats their choice.
oh and d) not be full of really stupid security holes.
but of course the general public dont want that..
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Smoke, Mirrors and Silence: The Browser Wars Reignite
Jooleem. Get Addicted.
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.
Yeah, after the server starts to spew out smoke, you would want some mirrors, and I have no clue where the silence fits in here.
Founder of Mirror Moon - Tsukihime Game Trans
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.
- "One of the purposes of Longhorn is to destroy the web as we know it."
- "...individual action is still important, so choose a standard compliant browser if you value the web..."
- "Standard data guarantees that you won't have to migrate to Longhorn in order to stay where you are."
Seriously, that was way too much reading, just to hear the anti-Microsoft banter at the end of the article. I wholly agree that Microsoft has done their fair share of "looking the other way" when it comes to standards-compliance, but I didn't read a single cited/quoted source confirming the argument that Longhorn == armageddon. When I think about the current PC market's level of saturation, I still wonder how MS is going to pull off a new marketing scam that actually gets people to upgrade or switch to Longhorn. I really wish we could get away from these "the sky is falling articles" because every time I read one, I never see its threat materialize. I guess just take it for what it is, one person's opinion.C. Griffin
"Can I keep his head for a souvenir?" --Max from Sam 'N Max Freelance Police
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.
Start digging.
Money for nothing, pix for free
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.
is not going to be released until 2006. In the meantime any professional web designer worth her salt is developing with standards. People like Zeldman are doing a great job of spreading the word to the design community. Web designers and developers are on the front lines of this war - not the consumer. It doesn't matter how many of your moms are using FireFox, if her bank site only works with IE then she she will only use IE. It is up to the designer/developer, if we want a standards based infrastructure then we have to impress upon our clients how using standards will save them money and improve their ability to communicate with their clients. We then have to have the discipline and the knowledge to build our web based applications to conform to those standards and to avoid Microsoft only features. If we can accomplish this, then Microsoft will have no choice but to create a browser that conforms.
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
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.
I don't think that's quite true. I think there is still plenty of room for commercial PHP development apps - providing they are good ones. So if Microsoft developed a really great tool I might consider buying it - well that would depend on whether it was a truly exceptional tool or another abomination like Front Page.
There is room to make money based off of free languages - you just can't force people to pay money for your tools anymore!
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.
A successful business is kept alive and grows, not through forces of conviction, but through the forces of convection.
...
1) Put up a site where people can "order" Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird, et al
2) Charge a reasonable fee (e.g. $5-15 USD, not $50-150 USD and not $0)
3) Take the proceeds and pay for as many ads as you can afford, all clicks pointing back to the web site
4)
5) Do not profit -- put all proceeds towards more ads
With a machine like this, you will blow away all competition.
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.)
That's some pretty poor self-deprecation. Not that I could do any better.
what we need is an awareness campaign. remember those 'best viewed with' buttons from the mid nineties? we need to bring those back. even if its not true that your site works better with some particular browser, something like this would at least spread awareness of the alternatives out there.
Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
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
My mum and dad would like to know why on-line banking doesn't work any more, please. Apparently their bank's web site has turned into some sort of marriage counselling service and warned them that they were "incompatible clients" or something.
No, please don't. The word "preach" almost implies fanaticism, and you are clearly a fanatic, in the same way RMS is clearly a fanatic. I have nothing against you or your right to believe passionately in your cause, but please understand that ultimately you are doing more harm than good, because you are burying your head in the sand. Fanatics rarely convert people long term, and they alienate far more people than they bring in.
If you want to help, then don't preach, but educate. Install Firefox or whatever alongside IE, and explain that they can use either program to surf the web, but that Firefox is safer. Make sure they know how to find IE if they come across a site that's "broken" so it doesn't work with Mozilla. But be objective, and don't stop them doing what they want to do. Evangelism is the #1 way to make smart but uninformed people think you're talking crap, and those are exactly the people you need to convert first.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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
Might i be the first to say (now that we have gotten off on this tangent):
"Burninate the peasents. Burninate the village. Troooooooooogdor!!!"
Thank you
Sincerly,
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
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.
I'm sure MS would love to be like AOL was, but they missed that boat. By the time Microsoft started to make inroads into the Internet, people had already realized that there was more to it than AOL.
Microsoft tried to lure people into their own private Internet called MSN, but eventually gave in and made MSN fully interoperable with the Real Internet.
Now that MS has established itself on the Internet and attracted a large number of both consumers (MSN Messenger, Hotmail) and providers (ASP, Windows Media), they can think about locking in again.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
"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...."
You don't want to intentionally break IE.
What every single web developer should do is code *exactly* to XHTML/CSS (and preferably Accessibility) standards. The code should show up fine. The second part is detecting browsers that aren't standards-compliant (all IE, NS6 and so on) and display this text:
"
This website is built according to Web Standards.
[Link to XHTML, CSS, 505 and AAA]
Unfortunately, your browser does not fully support these standards. You're free to continue browsing, but be aware that you may encounter some difficulties. Please report any problems to webmaster@mysite.com.
We suggest you download one of the following browsers to replace your current one. Each one is fully standards-compliant and can be downloaded without charge.
[List of browsers for the platform or a link to the resource page of the site]
['click to continue']
"
It's worked fine on my page -you have to make sure that the message isn't popped up every time the user refreshes, though, for which server-side sessions work fine.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
Konqueror is based on KHTML, not Mozilla.
The author is probably right about Microsoft hating the web, and he might even be right in his assertion that Longhorn is their attempt to replace it with their own thing, but he's wrong in assuming they even have a chance.
There are two reasons.
Firstly, the web is about small voices. It's not a medium for selling stuff or issuing press releases (although some people have made money doing that), it's about ordinary people saying stuff.
Remember how the web used to be, before VCs with their carpet bags full of money turned great swaths of it into a cheap version of UHF TV? Doesn't the thought of all the weasels switching to MS-Internet and going away bring a smile to your face?
Alas, it will not be, for the second reason the Longhorn Strategy will fail. Because breaking web compatibility means turning away customers and that's just not good for businesses.
Notice that all the commercial websites still around will work, at least mostly, on all sorts of browsers? Coincidence? I think not! Amazon tests their sites using Netscape 1.x! (Or they used to for a long time anyway--I don't know what their baseline is now.) That way, they know that their site will work on practically every browser out there, right out of the box.
Of course, some of the bigger e-business folks may start supporting Longhorn, but they'll stay compatible with the established standards because they don't want to lose their customers.
At this point, everyone has W3C-compliant (more or less) browsers and servers. They can all talk to each other. As soon as someone switches, they can't talk to the rest anymore and their setup becomes useless. This is why, for example, nobody has been able to replace SMTP, despite the whole spam problem.
I predict that we'll remain stuck with HTML, CSS and HTTP for a long time. The MS extensions will be a kewl technological blip that nobody will use but, if it's good, may well be lamented by future web developers as something that could have been.