The Browser Wars Are Back?

jpkunst writes "ZDNet UK reports and PCWorld.com report that, according to Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, whose comments came during a discussion with Yahoo Chief Operating Officer Dan Rosensweig at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, 'the browser wars are back', thanks to the emerging popularity of products such as Apple's Safari and the open-source Firefox. Andreessen warned that 'competition could compel the company [Microsoft] to use aggressive tactics to protect its Windows operating system monopoly'."

Comments

browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's this "browser" thing you're speaking of, and where do I get one?

Huh?

[asd-Strom]

When were they gone?

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

when microsoft won and had a big market share and when a lot of web sites only worked in msie

Re:Huh?

[devphaeton]

When were they gone?

I believe that was declared with the PMSNBC.com article that trumpeted "BROWSER WARS OVAR!!" and thus went on to claim IE the victor....

By what standard, i don't know...

Currently, i view MS as a hibernating giant- with Longhorn getting pushed back again and again, and IE just barely adding some bolted-on features of late (but yet not really fixing any of the severe issues with it)... and so forth...

If we, Apple, or anyone is going to put a sizeable dent into the Windows Entrenchment, *NOW* is the time...

Re:Huh?

[falcon5768]

For a long time you wouldnt be caught dead with Netscape on your computer... nothing worked with it because the web standards all used microsoft standards, not the properly selected ones.

But with Netscape turning into Mozilla and then being spunoff into Firefox, and Safari along with Opera and Omni giving even MORE choices, there now are more browsers that dont support microsoft standards than do.

Now you couple the fact that a large number of in the know people have now said to NOT use IE because of numerous widely publisised security breaches, and the once barely existant browser war has regained steam.

The best analogy would be the World Wars. It might be considered one long war, but there was a long break where hostilities stoped.

Re:Huh?

[EnderWiggnz]

nevermind that netscape 4.7x was the least standards compliant browser of the time.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

So where are the WMBD (weapons of mass browser destruction)?


Why are we going to war? Is this approved by the UN? (Is France in on this)? Is this Bush's Idea?

Re:Huh?

[dutchgen1]

Netscape didn't turn into Mozilla, Mozilla is based on the original Netscape gecko code and went its own way. Netscape continued on to the POS that it is today.

Re:Huh?

[gowen]

When were they gone?

What? Didn't you see those photos of Bill Gates standing on the USS Mariner in front of the banner that said "Mission Accomplished"?

Now watch this C: drive.

Re:Huh?

[tdemark]

If I had a lot of money - enough that $1 or $2 million wouldn't mean much - I would hire a small team of developers to take the OpenOffice code and work on it full time for a year. Make it 100% compatible with MS Office (well, maybe no flight sim in Excel), but also make it better and faster.

Then, I would release it saying "Here is a free replacement for Office that is 100% compatible with Office and also better because X, Y, Z. If you are a company and wish to have support, we have packages that are 1/10th the cost of Microsoft's offering."

Are you listening, Steve Jobs? Novell? IBM?

Oh, well, one could hope.

- Tony

Re:Huh?

[davandhol]

Netscape 6 & 7 were based on Mozilla, with added "features."

Re:Huh?

[AKAImBatman]

The best analogy would be the World Wars. It might be considered one long war, but there was a long break where hostilities stoped.

That's a *very* poor analogy. The first World War (referred to as "The Great War" in its time) was about the end of nobility in a modern and technological society. The web of force, power, and politics had finally caught up with the Nobility as the world got smaller and smaller.

To be specific, each country had made a defense pact with several other countries in an effort to hedge their bets and maintain power. The result was a complicated set of treaties that only required ONE attack anywhere in the world to trigger all out war.

The second World War was really about Eugenics and social superiority. The Nazis felt they were bred to be superior (period), the Japanese felt they were superior to the Chinese, and Mussolini felt his system of government to be superior to all others. So Hitler started a war to "reclaim" land he felt rightfully belonged to Germany, and Japan used it as cover to forward their goals. Mussolini was just without direction and ended up being responsible for Germany's failure to conquer Russia. (Mussolini's failures meant that Germany had to divert troops and miss their window for attacking Russia.)

The United States was in a unique position in these wars, because no one really had any sort of claim on our land, plus we were half a world away at a time when sea travel was still the most viable method for moving tons of traffic.

While no one knew it at the time, the US focus on aircraft carriers also gave them the most powerful naval fleet in existence. This combined sea and air power gave us the ability to perform strikes anywhere in the world, while the enemy could only hope to get potshots off from U-Boats.

So no, the two World Wars were not really just one big war.

Re:Huh?

[Chapium]

What exactly is "properly selected?" Is properly selected a standard set by a team of developers designing a browser with a huge majority of users of the internet? Or is it an "independant" group who makes up a list of things they think should be done in a browser?

Re:Huh?

[Sqwubbsy]

Question:
Where are you going to find investors when you offer that kind of return?
Seriously, IBM already has an Office Suite, SmartSuite. They charge $$$ for it. We get it free with our StinkPads and don't use it. Why?

Well looking at how well IBM has pushed OS/2, Notes, 1-2-3 and Ami-Pro, which was only like the best Word Processor EVAR, they've shown they can't manager Software. Why rely on stuff that won't be around and isn't compatible with anything?

Novells^WSCOs record isn't much better.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

For the last time.. If a webpage does not support all browswers it is a client server relationship...

Re:Huh?

[Sweetshark]

The Nazis felt they were bred to be superior (period).
Its less importent to know what the Nazis felt. Its more importent to find out why so many germans played along. And the reasons for that are to be found in WW I (the versailles treaty giving the germans the sole responsibility for the war, forbidding almost all military, and requesting reparations that made it impossible for germany to recover economically. The reason for WWII is the way WWI was ended. check your facts here.
The french wanted revenge (why else did they pickk versailles) for 1870 but went over the top. In the end this was the foundation for another war.

Re:Huh?

[starrsoft]

"there now are more browsers that dont support microsoft standards than do."

That is irrelevant. There always has been a greater number of browsers that don't support IE standards; the question is market share. Now Firefox is getting a significant market share.

Re:Huh?

[balster neb]

Sure, standards compliant is important, choice is important, and it's good that non IE browsers are finally getting attention. And it's nice to see Mozilla.org getting so much coverage in the mainstream media after all these years. And yes, do expect more sites to become more standards compliant in the coming months.

However, I feel that most of this talk of the browser wars being back and Firefox gaining market share are pretty irrelevant now.

The original browser wars started when MS realised the threat Netscape posed to its dominance on the desktop. Their fear was that the web browser (Netscape) would bypass the OS. This is precisely what Netscaped planned -- their intention was to reduce windows to "a buggy set of device drivers". This threat prompted MS to massively invest in their web browser (IE), and integrate it with future versions of Windows. IE eventually became the dominant browser on the web, and Netscape became a minor player.

But the web, and web browsing as they stand today are still fairly far from the old vision. Firefox and the other browsers will make the web slightly nicer, and IE's market share may just drop rapidly over the next year or so.

But is MS worried? No. Even if IE's market share falls massively in the near future, it is not Microsoft's concern. The real future lies in the next generation of web browsers. With Longhorn we are likely to see a hugely rewamped browser (probably rewritten from scratch), and built probably for potentially nasty things like XAML. That would be more of a realisation of the old vision.

The OSS world is obviously not blind to this. Mono addresses this possibility, and is trying to make an MS compatible XAML implementaion. Mozilla too has been drawing up plans for the future.

But either way, the browser wars as they are won't be here forever. Eventually (2006-07, perhaps), web access and interactivity would be so fundamental to the operating system shell itself, that the "web browser" as a stand alone app would be irrelevant.

Re:Huh?

[AKAImBatman]

This is true. The second World War could not have occurred without being staged by the end of the first World War. None the less, the Nazi's and socialism were what filled the vacuum left by the Nobility. It just so happens that Germany was most receptive because of the way they were treated at the end of WWI.

Re:Huh?

[FyRE666]

For a long time you wouldnt be caught dead with Netscape on your computer... nothing worked with it because the web standards all used microsoft standards, not the properly selected ones.

Hardly. Nothing worked (correctly) with it because the rendering engine was absolutely terrible! Resizing the browser would usually destroy CSS formatting, usually break scripts and often crash the browser. Broken markup could easily crash it. The DOM was lacking somewhat in properties, and what was there was very often unusable if you did want everything to come down in flames. Memory leaks abounded, it was slower than IE... etc... etc...

Believe me, I was writing a LOT of code when that browser was popular, and it wasn't a fun time to be a web developer...

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but it'll take more than a year to get OpenOffice in line with MS Office. MS Office is the undisputed king of office applications, and it's one of the few things MS has actually done right. I've used several of them, and office suites may be the only category of software where I use MS's offering because it's actually superior to any of the others on a technical basis.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Writer]

Are you listening, Steve Jobs? Novell? IBM?

I think Apple could easily introduce a competing Office Suite of their own since they seem to be making a lot of successful software for their own platform, like those in The Production Suite and the iLife ones. However, Microsoft Office seems to be very important for the Mac platform because Microsoft has used the threat of discontinuing it as leverage to manipulate Apple.

I think Apple has chosen to coexist with Microsoft, since they have slightly different business models and markets, and each company has a somewhat different niche. Apple's primary income is hardware and their market leans towards media, while Microsoft's income is from software and their market leans towards business. If Apple challenged Office, Microsoft could give them a hard time by discontinuing it for the Mac, making incompatibilities with new versions of Office (perhaps through DRM), and challenging the Mac's dominance in media. Microsoft's deep pockets and monopoly leverage would be daunting to challenge head-on, so Apple is probably choosing not to rock the boat.

Re:Huh?

[mattyrobinson69]

Your right, except the british navy was the most powerful navy in the world.

Re:Huh?

[Richard Steiner]

IBM can "manage" software; they just can't MARKET it worth a damn. :-)

Re:Huh?

[Janax]

I don't agree. Anyone who has studied history should know that the reason the Nazi party was able to gain power in Germany was because of the brutal conditions placed in the Treaty of Versailles after "WW I".

The war reparation payments was just one of the factors that caused the German public to suffer massive inflation to the point where I have heard from a person that lived through it that it "took a wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread." While most likely exaggerated, the Nazis were able to take advantage of the poor economy and general disdain in the treaty for Germany in its rise to power.

The "Aryan race" and anti-Semitism were ways of keeping the flames stoked and also stemmed from one of Hitler's personal agendas.

Re:Huh?

[ahodgson]

While no one knew it at the time, the US focus on aircraft carriers also gave them the most powerful naval fleet in existence. This combined sea and air power gave us the ability to perform strikes anywhere in the world, while the enemy could only hope to get potshots off from U-Boats.

I seem to recall some non-US carriers being present close to Hawaii in late 1941. I guess they might have been well-equipped U-Boats though.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

So where are the WMBD (weapons of mass browser destruction)?

Microsoft Internet Exploder

Re:Huh?

[AKAImBatman]

except the british navy was the most powerful navy in the world.

By who's account? The British Navy was smaller than the US Navy throughout WWII, and was highly dependent on battleships instead of carriers. It was decisively proved in the Pacific theater that a battleship was no match for the range and offensive ability of a carrier.

Here's a link showing Britian's WWII Naval capacity:

http://www.naval-history.net/WW2CampaignRoyalNavy. htm

You'll note that they went into the war with only ONE carrier as opposed to the four or five that the US had. The US also had a comparable number of battleships (many lost in the attack on Pearl Harbor). Once the war got in full gear, however, the US managed to construct dozens of Essex class carriers, and a hundred or so Jeep Carriers. Escorts were not a big problem either. Look at this link for a list of retired aircraft carriers. Just about everything up to CV-45 was either in or built for World War II.

That's an amazing naval force that no country in the world has EVER managed to replicate.

Re:Huh?

[j-pimp]

IBM can "manage" software; they just can't MARKET it worth a damn. :-)
This is afterall the company that employed the author of the Mythical Man Month.

Re:Huh?

[AKAImBatman]

Ah, sorry. I was mostly pointing at Germany. Yes, the Japanese did have carriers, but not very many of them. Worse yet, they lost a good chunk of their carrier force in the battle of Midway.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI:

XAML is a rip off of XUL which is from the OSS world ala Mozilla/Firefox.

Re:Huh?

[Bedouin X]

Maybe so, but it had better features. Print Preview (which IE did gank in 5.5), roaming profiles, and syntax highlighting in view source were a few of my favorites.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Either your lieing or you have never used another browser. Amex's site is noticeably slower on Safari and Mozilla than it is with IE on the pc, and though the online payments and current chages might show up, the rewards section will sometimes hang.

A better example of Safari sucking is www.myredbook.com which displays fine but the search features will not work at all. Mozilla works but again is noticably slower.

It seems to me that Safari and browsers on macs in general have trouble everytime they need to run a script.

However this doesn't deter me from loving my mac anyway since it allows me to actually work without as many hangups and annoyances as my windows machine, and I just like the gui better anyway.

So as it stands I use my mac for work and my windows box for surfing the net and playing games, whcih is what everyone should be doing anyway.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many ships did the US have in the 18'th century?
Damn naval upstarts! :-)

Re:Huh?

[Doches]

I think Apple could easily introduce a competing Office Suite of their own

http://www.apple.com/appleworks/ Sorry, mate, but it didn't work out.

Re:Huh?

[AKAImBatman]

How many ships did the US have in the 18'th century? Damn naval upstarts! :-)

About 50 or so for the Revolutionary War. Not bad for an upstart. :-)

Actually, the US was building ships before it was even the US. Ship building of the time was really about good carpentry, and was something easily accessible by anyone with the proper skills and materials. That's why a large portion of so many fleets were actually mercenaries. They'd purchase a boat and take on tasks for a given monarch in return for payment. Many ships had prize money associated with them in addition to any valuable cargo they were carrying. Pirating was another way use your ship, but it wasn't necessarily as profitable.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Writer]

http://www.apple.com/appleworks/ Sorry, mate, but it didn't work out.

I know about Appleworks. It is a simple suite more on par with Microsoft Works rather than Microsoft Office in terms of features. I think Apple could develop a professional version more like Office, made out of separate applications that integrate with one another like The Production Suite, but aren't doing so in order to keep Microsoft Office on the Mac platform.

Re:Huh?

[Thu25245]

Ah. Never had much use for the rewards section. (Don't use those services, so they're not worth the additonal money.) Performance seems acceptable, but I've never used Firefox on that site, so I can't compare.

opera

[genner]

Firefox, Safari? What about Opera! I'm sick of
being left out of the browser wars. I like my
mouse gesture enabled browser thak you very much.

Re:opera

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, ok.

Re:opera

[Anonymous Coward]

All opera users reply to this comment. i am opera user # 2

Re:opera

[hype7]

Firefox, Safari? What about Opera! I'm sick of
being left out of the browser wars. I like my
mouse gesture enabled browser thak you very much.

there's nothing opera-specific about mouse enabled gestures.

here it is for OS X, supporting all major browsers and many other apps:
http://www.bitart.com/CocoaGestures.html

Cocoa Gestures adds mouse gestures to any Cocoa program such as Mail, Address Book, iCal, TextEdit, Safari, Chimera, OmniWeb, Path Finder, Stone Design's great suite of applications like Create, and many others.

-- james

Re:opera

[Jens_UK]

Well, they are not enabled by default, but gestures can be added to Firefox: http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/showlist.php? category=Mouse%20Gestures

Re:opera

[TheRealMindChild]

Opera is one of the FEW pay for Web Browsers, AND it is the most horrible browser *I* have ever used. Especially its crippled javascript implementation is enough to drive a geek to burn villages and blow up trains

Re:opera

[genner]

I'll go warn the villagers.

Re:opera

[devphaeton]

Especially its crippled javascript implementation is enough to drive a geek to burn villages and blow up trains

Naw, we've got tons of video games for that. :-D

Re:opera

[betelgeuse-4]

Opera was around during the original browser wars but was never a serious contender (in terms of market share). What makes you think it is a serious contender now? Firefox has mouse gesture extensions (some people don't like them anyway), has managed to gain a reputation as more secure than IE and, as others have pointed out, is free.

Re:opera

[BrokenHalo]

Indeed, they have been available for some time - and also for Mozilla.

Hell, I've been told there are similar extensions available for IE, though I have no idea whether that's true or not.

Re:opera

[WIAKywbfatw]

Inferior how? You must be smoking something that's rotting your brain, bud.

Compared to its rivals, Opera is a smaller, faster, more feature-packed browser that's on the cutting edge. So tell me again how it's inferior?

Re:opera

[WIAKywbfatw]

Again, more FUD. Opera's JavaScript hasn't been an issue for sometime now.

Re:opera

[richy freeway]

http://optimoz.mozdev.org/gestures/

Firefox gestured right up! ;D

Re:opera

[ZeroGuard]

I love Opera, best browser I have ever used, there is something about FireFox I just hate, but not sure what it is tho...anyway Opera for life.

Re:opera

[Anonymous Coward]

Standards support.

Re:opera

[eviltypeguy]

Easy, it doesn't support most of the CSS and DOM JS features that I need, or it supports them poorly.

Re:opera

[Foofoobar]

Well I wouldn't call it inferior because it still is a damn fine browser but there are a few things that don't make me use it.

- larger footprint
- less CSS support
- not free (unless you want an annoying banner ad)
- buggier (yes, in comparison to Firefox)
- less support
- they make the choices for you unlike in Firefox where all the add-ons and extensions are there for YOU to choose.

Al in all, I would still use Opera LONG before I got back to IE but it took a different approach than Firefox and I really have to say I like that I get to choose my own extensions rather than having them bundled.

Re:opera

[ACNSlave]

Opera was around during the original browser wars but was never a serious contender (in terms of market share). What makes you think it is a serious contender now?

I'm no Opera Fan, but I have to point out the logical fallacy here (which, by the way the people who marked this guy insightful should read): Product A had no market share at some point in time. Support your argument that it should have more market share now.

Can you see how easily that same argument can be turned against your favorite browser? I believe the term is non sequitur. Get a better argument. One based on facts would be good.

Re:opera

[Anonymous Coward]

It is one of the most serious contenders for browsers on embedded devices. It also doesn't have an insignificant market share--it is probably higher than Safari, not to mention Konqueror & other popular open source browser. It is also higher than legacy browsers & one reason probably is that, though it will chew up all the RAM you let it, it also has incredible performance on dated hardware.

Re:opera

[Jugalator]

Firefox has mouse gesture extensions

... and, even more importantly, Firefox has extensions.

Opera has plugins which are mostly just viewers or stand-alone (why do they call them plug-ins!?) programs.

Re:opera

[Bralkein]

I've used quite a lot of browsers in my time, including Firefox, and I have to say that Opera impressed me so much I bought a license. It's not just about the features, it's how they're implemented and put together that matters. Sure, Firefox can have extensions added to give it an Opera-ish feel, like mouse gestures and the superior (IMHO) implementation of tabbed browsing, and it's free software, which is great, I am writing this on Linux and if ever I made software I'd be sure to GPL it, so Firefox is definitely a good, flexible browser that one can use with a clear conscience.

Still, I prefer to use Opera. Firefox's extensions, plugins, whatever you call them feel just like what they are, additional features glued on afterwards. That's not to say they're not useful, but using Firefox is simply not as smooth and effortless as using Opera. I wanted to move away from Opera to Firefox, for the sake of free software, but I am afraid I just couldn't forget it. It is such a beautifully crafted piece of software that I can't just not use it. Even if you don't like the default appearence, interface, whatever, it is so configurable, moreso than Firefox I think, that you can make it behave just how you want it to. With any other browser I just don't feel like I have that level of control. Maybe it is true that it is not a strong contender in the "Browser Wars"... but that's just bad luck, because it damn well should be!

Re:opera

[TheRaven64]

While I like CocoaGestures, it can't support the mouse gesture I used the most in Opera, namely right dragging down on a link to open it in a new tab.

Re:opera

[TheRaven64]

I don't know what version of Opera you used, but the one I used had two JavaScript implementations. One of which conformed to the ECMA specification, and another that is bug-compatible with IE (it switched between them depending on what you told it to identify as). It also included more complete CSS2 support than any other browser I've used (although Safari generally provided nicer looking output from the same CSS, particularly on things like shadows and bevels).

Re:opera

[jbich]

Opera? Safari? Firefox?
Um.. What about galeon?
I've been using galeon for a long time now, and it's fast, sleek, stripped down, runs better and the interface works better than mozilla AND Firefox.

I'm stuck using firefox until my workstation comes in at work, and firefox doesn't seem to bad, but it has some interface issues.

Galeon by far has been the best experience I've had with a browser.

As for the web wars.. as a web developer, I just want it to be over (and stay over).
I prefer (by far) Mozilla compliant browers, but if IE won, then let them win. Yeah they had no honor in their victory, and they cheated, lied and used really bullshit tactics to win.. believe me I did my share of bitching, and continue bitching about microsoft on a daily basis, but cmon...

I lived through the Browser War crap all through the 90's... Let It Die. Please! For My SANITY!

Re:opera

[Anonymous Coward]

firefox has supported mouse gestures for some time, oh wait and there is no banner and its free...... opera still must be better...... or not.

Re:opera

[Anonymous Coward]

yahoo doesn't care about opera--they're portal service (my.yahoo.com) definitely does not render correctly in Opera.

Re:opera

[Anonymous Coward]

there's nothing opera-specific about mouse enabled gestures.

True, but it was the first web browser to support it by default.

It was the first web browser to support multiple tabs.

It is the fastest and smallest graphical web browser.

It supports every standard.

It's 'Full Screen' mode is truly full screen.

Opera developers are always innovating, and there is always some new cool feature with each release that other web browsers copy a few years later.

I have been an Opera user for over 4 years now, and will never switch to anything else.

Re:opera

[f00zy]

Yeah, so when is lynx going support mouse gestures anway?

Re:opera

[TheRealMindChild]

I don't think so champ. Indulge me, ever so quickly...

Make 3 pages, called main.html, topframe.html, and bottomframe.html. And dont worry. I took a whole 3 minutes putting this together. No need to thank me.

Begin main.html

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Main</title>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
</head>
<frameset rows="50%,50%">
<frame name="mytop" src="topframe.html" scrolling="no" frameborder=0 noresize>
<frame name="mybottom" src="bottomframe.html" scrolling="no" frameborder=0 noresize>
</frameset>
</html>

End main.html

Begin topframe.html

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Top</title>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
</head>
<body>
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
function printframe()
{
window.parent.mybottom.window.focus();
window.parent.mybottom.window.print();
}
</script>
This page should never print<br>
<form name="PrintTest" method="get" action="">
<input type="button" name="printme" value="Print other frame" OnClick="printframe(); return false;">
</form>
</body>
</html>

End topframe.html

Begin bottomframe.html

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Bottom</title>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
</head>
<body>
<b>Only this page should print!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!</b>
</body>
</html>

End bottomframe.html

Now I even made sure they pass the w3c validator so as to not get blame from having invalid pages. Anyway, that code works perfect in the top browsers... all except Opera. Opera, even the most current version (This has been a bug for as long as I have known in Opera), will print every frame, where as all other browsers will properly print their specific target. I used this perticular example because it is the most recent one I have had the priviledge of dealing with. Believe me, there are hundereds more. Ive got a notebook dedicated specifically to Opera bugs I should watch out for

Re:opera

[AmigaAvenger]

i'm sick of hearing opera users complain! I run a website averages around 2 million file hits per day. Opera is less then 1/2 of 1% of those, not nearly enough to even be on my radar, let alone considered part of the browser war!!

Re:opera

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever moderated this interesting was bored with mod points to burn.

Opera is not the only mouse gesture enabled browser.

Re:opera

[betelgeuse-4]

Saying "Product A had no market share at some point in time." is generalising too much. Opera had a small market share thoughout a period when the market size was growing rapidly (not just 'any time'). It failed to gain enough users who were new to the internet or convert massive numbers of current users. My question wasn't meant to be rhetorical; what has changed, either about Opera or the nature of the browser wars, that means it will make significant gains now? I agree a similar argument could be applied to firefox, but not the same one. Firefox wasn't around during the original browser wars so has no 'form' in that sense. Search for Firefox benefits and you'll find lots of reasons why firefox might beat IE. The fact it has a reputation as a possible IE-killer will aid it a lot.

Re:opera

[Anonymous Coward]

He had two points:
1. Why isn't Opera part of the browser wars? It has a higher market share than Safari.

This is why I modded him up.

2. He likes that Opera has mouse gestures. (By default and without the need for plugins, mind you.) He didn't say it was an exclusive feature to Opera or even that this particular feature was implemented better than in other browsers.

Re:opera

[WankersRevenge]

You can find them in central park

Re:opera

[ViolentGreen]

Would that have anything to do with the lack of a right mouse button?

*ducks*

Re:opera

[Anonymous Coward]

Informative? WTF? This is just an opinion with no evidence at all to back it up.

Re:opera

[krewemaynard]

man, this happens every time mozilla comes up... "what about [insert whiner's favorite browser here]? why is it always mozilla?" look, it's simple: the mozillas are FREE (no ads you have to pay to remove), they support standards, they're cross-platform, and they work well. besides, lynx isnt for everyone.

Re:opera

[Shinglor]

Less CSS Support? From http://www.opera.com/docs/specs/ - "Opera 7.5 supports all of CSS2.1". And I'm sure they'll support CSS3 as soon as the specification is complete.

I would consider one of Opera's big advantages over Firefox to be it's lack of bugs or general "dodgyness". Firefox's bookmarks are a prime example.

Re:opera

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I even made sure they pass the w3c validator so as to not get blame from having invalid pages.

I used this perticular example because it is the most recent one I have had the priviledge of dealing with. Believe me, there are hundereds more. Ive got a notebook dedicated specifically to Opera bugs I should watch out for.

Looks like we need a spelling validator too.

But I tested your example and, indeed, it does just as you describe.

Re:opera

[thephotoman]

Um...last I checked, Galeon was running on the same engine as Mozilla, and the deb package for Galeon depends upon having Mozilla-Browser installed. Why waste the hard drive space with Galeon when Mozilla/Firefox does things in the exact same way?

Re:opera

[jbich]

Because one of the HUGE drawbacks of mozilla is it's rediculously bloated interface.

Galeon runs on Mozilla's libraries and engines, but the interface is all galeon's.. it's streamlined ..
Heck, their motto is : "The web and Only the Web".

Try using Mozilla for a week and then switch to galeon and see which you like better...

Re:opera

[sk8king]

I also use opera. Mostly because it appears to be quicker than the other browsers [back functions etc]. Also, I've tried the mouse gestures on Firefox [not for very long mind you] and for the most part they are pretty much the same, but there are little differences that make me prefer the faster Opera. I'm not patient enough to learn the gestures and I do believe that the gestures I use in Opera are BETTER in Opera.

Re:opera

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera is less then 1/2 of 1% of those, not nearly enough to even be on my radar, let alone considered part of the browser war!!

Perhaps this is because Opera can spoof itself as other browsers, so that pages that "require" IE or other can still be used?

Re:opera

[BigDu]

Perhaps I'm just not nerdy enough, but what are you (and others in this post) doing that you find that Mozilla has "interface issues"?!!? I mean, it's a browser people, so you go back, forward and reload. And the extensions and themes seem to work properly. So really, what are you doing or trying to do that Mozilla doesn't work properly? Besides the occasional pages that may not render exactly right.

Re:opera

[Lisandro]

Opera is a great value. Oooooh, it's not free, those money-whoring bastards! Well, i still think it's the best browser available today - i like Firefox a lot, but it can't compete in usability. When i use Opera, it just feels comfortable to use.

The latest version (Opera 7) is excellent. Damn fast, excelent render, very standart compliant, mouse gestures, tabbed browsing, password manager, download manager, integrated popup blocker, very handy Google/Amazon/Yahoo/etc search, mail client, the works. It's very stable, and if it happens to crash it humbly asks if you want to resume your browsing where it was when it died. And all this occupying less space both in memory and HD than the competiton - in fact, most of the installer accounts for the Sun Java runtime.

For 40 bucks, it's a great value (less if you're a studient). It irrtates me a bit when people diss this fine piece of software just because "it's not free". Firefox is IE done right, but Opera it's a whole different deal and quite better once you get accostumed to it.

Re:opera

[Lisandro]

Opera identifies itself as Explorer by default; it renders pages that would otherwise be blocked to it just fine. It sad they have to do it, but thats how it is.

Re:opera

[hkmwbz]

Wow, you just found a minor issue in Opera. Firefox sure doesn't have any bugs!

Re:opera

[angulion]

Personally I prefer Firefox, but Opera has one place neither IE or mozillas do - browsers for mobile phones. All Nokias capable of supporting a browser use Opera. (series 60+)

I know the Mozilla ppl have started a Minimo project to "address" this, but it still seem to be at an very early stage.

Re:opera

[hkmwbz]

Larger footprint?! Opera is a smaller download than Firefox, and Opera can even fit on a mobile phone. Firefox can't. Opera is far better with memory on my PC.

Buggier? Firefox crashes daily here, and even though I use Opera more often, it never crashes.

What is "less support" supposed to mean? It has forums, newsgroups, mailing lists, and proper QA, and free email support. You can get in touch with a real person who knows the program well!

As for Opera making choices, that's a good thing. Everything works out of the box, and I don't have to waste my valuable time finding an extension that works, sort of.

Re:opera

[siphi]

I realise your comparing Opera to Firefox, but I just wanted to compare it to IE, based on your points.

Larger Footprint: Opera is currently using 34,080Kb with 4tabs and mail open. IE is using 15,484Kb just displaying www.google.ie (multiply that by 4 and open Outlook and I'm sure that number way outdoes Opera. 61,936Kb + Outlook) I geuss Opera wins that one.

Less CSS support: How about it has Proper CSS support, and not modified/lessened/proprietry CSS support? I'd go with Opera on that one.

not Free: I find nothing annoying about google adds. Opera on my setup has more screenspace than IE does (and I have the addbar.) IE just has massive Icons which I never use. Oh yeah Opera has tabs unlike IE.

Buggier: Not sure how it compares to Firefox on this one as I don't use Firefox (only at Uni), but compared to IE it's as stable as the noble gasses.

Less Support: ????? What ????? Last time I tryed looking for Firefox help I came accross so many different places telling me different things I gave up. Last time I had problems with Opera I went into their website and found it imediatly from people who knew the browser off by heart. As for IE support,,, you dont need it, just restart and it works again.

Dictatorship: I hate downloading Apps just so I can go downloading/installing/setting up/learning. I prefer to have it ready to go straight away. You might say don't I still need to learn how to use it? well yes, but not at once, Opera notifies you on how to use something once it detects your accessing that part of it.

this is just a vage comparison mainly between Opera and IE on my system (2.6Ghz Cel (laptop), 512meg, intel graphs, 15"scrn, Xp home.)
If anyone wants to make a comparison between Firefox and Opera based on these points, giving references to their system backing those points up, please do. I'd be most interested to see them.

Re:opera

[Anonymous Coward]

lynx isnt for everyone.

Yeah, thats why there is links and elinks!

Re:opera

[Anonymous Coward]

So you at least admin that you're whiney then?

Re:opera

[WIAKywbfatw]

Sheesh, if you're going to flame people then at least spell five-letter words correctly...

Re:opera

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution is pretty simple

don't use frames

they have been evil since thieir implementation, and they haven't become any better

the problems with the address bar is still there, but just allowing the navigation to be a seperate page from the content is no longer a good solution [particularly as it is trivial to make the same appearance without frames, and because it has an insignificant increased demand on the sever [unless, god forbid, you have only static html on your site]]

iframes are evil as well

printing frames is in general evil, because often IE seems to pick a random frame [sometimes an iframe with an advertisement] and print it. Sure, the user could right-click on their desired frame and click print, but most of them don't know that [and shouldn't be expected to]

well anway, most of what you would do with frames is possible using css2 in opera mozilla and safari/konqueror. However, these things very frequently do not work in IE.

Also, why are you giving the user a print button on the page? wouldn't you want to make the browser controls work as the user expects instead of suggesting they use your own print button? again, css will allow you do do a lot, particularly with a css-driven design [or perhaps just a postscript alternate form of your page in a meta tag, which last I checked only IE paid attention to]

JavaScript should only be used where necescary, and probably never for positioning. Too bad IE has problems positioning things using css

Re:opera

[kai.chan]

The solution is pretty simple
don't use frames

That is not really a solution. Your suggestion is a workaround that hinders users/developers because of a flaw in the software. Using this logic, we should all praise Microsoft and fault ourselves for crashing their buggy piles of junk.

Re:opera

[roadrunnerro]

What about Maxthon? It uses the IE engine with almost none of the problems, so websites actually do render correctly. Among other stuff: fast, configurable, tabbed navigation, mouse gestures, very efficient popup/content-ad blocker, shitload of plugins...

Ah, and for the OSS-obssed: it can also use the Gecko engine (some features, like advanced drag and drop stuff, are disabled because of it though).

Re:opera

[Foofoobar]

This depends on what system you use it on and how many extensions you have added to it. Also do not confuse Firefox with Mozilla; they have a similar codebase but they are not the same thing.

And Buggier? Yes. Opera is slightly buggy. I've used Mozilla since 0.3 and I have to say that I haven't had a crash since 0.9; I have had discrepancies in how it shows the page but I realized that was due to bad HTML and not the browser.

Less support means less community support. And no matter how you slice it, this is extremely true of any proprietary system vs an open source system. Open source software generally always has a larger community support network.

Yes, having others make choices for you is a very good thing... in a dictatorship. But luckily King George the second is about to get dethroned so I'm allowed to make choices for myself again. Yay pseudo-democracy!

Re:opera

[punkrockguy318]

Dude, you have a notebook of Opera bugs to watch out for? I mean, I can understand submitting a bug to a bug tracker, that's reasonable. But you really need to start getting a social life when you have a notebook of Opera bugs.

Re:opera

[ACNSlave]

The fact it has a reputation as a possible IE-killer will aid it a lot.

Agreed. I believe that Firefox still needs something more than that to get the "critical density" it needs to become the majority browser. I'm not sure what that is, but I'm willing to do my part, if only to stick it to a certain monopoly I won't mention by name... :-)

Re:opera

[hkmwbz]

"And Buggier? Yes. Opera is slightly buggy. I've used Mozilla since 0.3 and I have to say that I haven't had a crash since 0.9; I have had discrepancies in how it shows the page but I realized that was due to bad HTML and not the browser."

Wow, anecdotal evidence is sooo great! Let me tell you, I use Opera more often than Firefox (which is only used for testing), but Firefox crashes far more often. Opera never crashes here. And stop blaming "bad HTML". It's a browser, so it should handle it.

"Less support means less community support. And no matter how you slice it, this is extremely true of any proprietary system vs an open source system. Open source software generally always has a larger community support network."

Oh please. The Opera forum has over 100K members, while the Mozilla forum has less than 80K. And that's just the Opera forum, and not counting mailing lists, newsgroups, and of course the support team at Opera.

Please, stop making assumptions and generalizing over open-source vs. closed-source. No, open-source software does not generally have a larger community support network. We shouldn't be making comments either way.

But stop it already, this "community support" nonsense is obviously not a fact, but yet another assumption from an open-source zealot.

"Yes, having others make choices for you is a very good thing... in a dictatorship. But luckily King George the second is about to get dethroned so I'm allowed to make choices for myself again. Yay pseudo-democracy!"

Great job on the useless analogies. Again, my point is that Opera gives you a useful place to start. You don't have to spend ages building your own browser. Everything is there, ready for use. Firefox needs to be extended and enhanced, because the default install is completely stripped down and nearly useless.

Re:opera

[Foofoobar]

Yay. You have 100K members, take that number by 10 and come on by come on by Firefox/Mozilla some time.

Again, as I said before, the problems you are having are more than likely related to your platform setup or that you are using an older version. But I like how your ineptitude with your OS gets blamed on the software; Bill Gates uses that tactic all the time too.

Geezo you are twitchy and defensive. Did your mom beat you with a rake when you were a child?

Re:opera

[hkmwbz]

"Yay. You have 100K members, take that number by 10 and come on by come on by Firefox/Mozilla some time."

I've been there. The MozillaZine forum only has 80K members. I was specifically talking about the Opera forum at my.opera.com, and that is not counting the various fan forums, including foreign ones, not counting newsgroups, and not counting mailing lists.

"Again, as I said before, the problems you are having are more than likely related to your platform setup or that you are using an older version."

I regularly check for updates, so I always use the latest version of both Opera and Firefox. And guess what, Firefox is still more unstable than Opera. In fact, the latest Opera beta/preview is far more stable than any recent version of Firefox.

"But I like how your ineptitude with your OS gets blamed on the software; Bill Gates uses that tactic all the time too."

So your anecdotal evidence that Opera is buggier than Firefox is valid, but my anecdotal evidence of the contrary isn't? Please.

"Geezo you are twitchy and defensive. Did your mom beat you with a rake when you were a child?"

You know why I'm defensive? It's because I'm sick and tired of the mindless Firefox drones that keep repeating the same tired old crap about Firefox's magnificence and Opera's crappiness.

I'm sick and tired of hearing Firefox drones repeating the memes they've heard from someone else which they in turn heard from someone else, which... And it goes on forever.

I rarely see Opera users bashing Firefox. They are happy to use Opera and let you get on with your business using whatever floats your boat. However, I frequently see Firefox zealots attacking Opera and Opera users if anyone dares to mention Opera and suggest that it does some things better than Firefox.

I'm sick and tired of brainless open-source drones that go on and on and on about Firefox and how it's almost the second coming of Christ. I don't give a damn if it's open or closed source, I just want the damn job done! And Opera happens to get the job done for me, much better than Firefox does.

I realize that i might be damn near impossible for a brainwashed open-source Firefox zealot to fathom but this is a fact: Firefox is no the be-all end-all of browsers. It's just another browser, and it certainly isn't everyone's cup of tea. Being open-source does not negate this fact.

Re:opera

[hkmwbz]

"Yay. You have 100K members, take that number by 10 and come on by come on by Firefox/Mozilla some time."

In case I didn't make myself perfectly clear:

We were talking about "community support". I was pointing out the fact that the Opera forum has more members than the MozillaZine forum. It is a measure of community site, but there are other communities out there as well.

Somehow, your open-source zealot brain has managed to twist this into being about how many people are using it in total, or you think all Opera users visit the Opera forums.

Geez.

Re:opera

[Foofoobar]

Oh, we only count ONE SITE?! I'm sorry to tell you this because I'm afraid your tiny little brain will explode. You see Mozilla and Firefox have several. Yes, they do. They are all over the place. Zealot brain or not, I at least have the ability to count. It comes in handy, you should try it sometime.

Counting can be fun. :)

Oh, is the little flamer mad now, did I make him cry? :(

Re:opera

[hkmwbz]

Obviously it is near impossible to get through to you.

Wow, Mozilla and Firefox have several, do they! So does Opera, Firefox zealot. I already explained this. The 100K vs. 80K figure was just a simple example, forum vs. forum. I did not make any attempt at counting fansites, newsgroups, mailing lists and so on.

I'm not sure how many ways I can explain this.

I just don't think there's any way I can really get through your thick open-source skull.

Re:opera

[Foofoobar]

Well it would be possible should you use something aside from subjective data. Aside from that all I have seen thus far is TROLLING from a child who doesn't like coming in second.

Hey, if I was wrong, I doubt I would have gotten modded up so high. Don't worry though. One day I'm sure you'll be able to admit you're wrong and we will look back on these posts and Laugh and Laugh and Laugh! :)

Now run back under your bridge... shoo.

Re:opera

[hkmwbz]

"Well it would be possible should you use something aside from subjective data. Aside from that all I have seen thus far is TROLLING from a child who doesn't like coming in second."

The pot is calling the kettle black, it seems.

"Hey, if I was wrong, I doubt I would have gotten modded up so high."

Haha, how old are you? 12? Dude, this is Slashdot. If you can mange to post a pro-open-source comment and get modded down, let me know! Getting modded up is not proof of your speaking the truth. It means that somf of your open-source friends automatically mod up any post which is pro-OS. How do you think trolls that are gathering karma for trolling get their karma? They are modded up! Does that make them right?

The fact that you use modding to support your argument shows how hopeless of a case you are.

Your comment was factually incorrect, even on the first item: Opera does not have a larger footprint. Opera fits on mobile phones! Does Firefox? Didn't think so.

Then there's your rubbish "more buggy" with useless anecdotal evidence to support it. Sorry dude, my anecdotal evidence contradicts yours. So who is right?

And of course the "less support" comment which doesn't make sense at all.

Oh, and guess what! Firefox makes choices for you too! It has a default setup, which is chosen by someone else!

As you can clearly see, I have shown you that your comment about Opera was misguided and uninformed. Larger footprint?! Opera uses the same engine on PC and mobile, while Mozilla has to strip down Gecko to even fit it into 64 MB! Talk about "larger footprint".

Little boy, let us adults deal with discussions. You should read and learn until you are actually capable of coming up with useful and factually correct arguments, and not just repeating the tired old lies you've heard from someone who heard from someone else who...

LOL!

Re:opera

[Foofoobar]

Boo hoo... Opera still isn't popular and better no matter how much you whine or troll. Boo hoo.

Re:opera

[hkmwbz]

"Boo hoo... Opera still isn't popular and better no matter how much you whine or troll. Boo hoo."

Cute. The young and inexperienced Firefox zealot is discussing browsers! He's run out of Firefox pages to steal arguments from, so now he's got nothing left.

Oh well. You lost this time too.

Re:opera

[Foofoobar]

There you go, jumping to conclusions. Next time try basing your argument on facts... it makes you seem smarter. :)

Re:opera

[hkmwbz]

I have all my facts straight and proved you wrong. Next time you want to discuss, try to come up with your own arguments, and don't just spew out propaganda you've read somewhere else.

Re:opera

[Foofoobar]

Sure if you say so. You're a legend in your own mind. :)

Re:opera

[kikta]

It's not just about the features, it's how they're implemented and put together that matters.

I think you hit the nail on the head. I personally dont care for Opera. The look, feel, & behaviors just don't suit me. But I can see how they would appeal to others & I can respect that notion.

Hell, I would prefer Firefox if I had to pay for it & Opera was free. So why can't it be the other way around? :)

Re:opera

[Guppy06]

"enough to drive a geek to burn villages and blow up trains"

Well, if it weren't for all that damned sunlight out there...

This Just In

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft attempts to destroy all browsers in new version of Windows by causing them to make farting sounds every time you visit a web site.

Re:This Just In

[mikefe]

"Microsoft attempts to destroy all browsers in new version of Windows by causing them to make farting sounds every time you visit a web site."

Oooh, even better do that with IE!

What a better way to keep workers from using it -- emberass them!

Re:This Just In

[bujoojoo]

"Microsoft attempts to destroy all browsers in new version of Windows by causing them to make farting sounds every time you visit a web site."

Oooh, even better do that with IE!

What a better way to keep workers from using it -- emberass them!

You don't work with system admins, do you?

Re:This Just In

[Cro Magnon]

Would it make that sound everytime a popup opened?

Re:This Just In

[mormop]

Better than the kids being redirected to the Hot Horny Sluts search engine every time they try going online. Internet Explorer, what porn do you want dumped on your desktop today? Bought to you with Active seX technology (TM). .

Re:This Just In

[mikefe]

Work with them? Hell I am one!

I would be a BOFH if I had the guts...

Protecting the Monopoly

[PonyHome]

Yeah, Microsoft might take some REALLY extreme tactic to protect their monopoly -- like giving their browser away for free, bundled with the operating system! Oh, wait....

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[Mattintosh]

That'll be a good tactic against Safari... ...

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Sorry. :)

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me, if the EU were to decide to force MS to withdraw their browser from the OS, forcing people to download a copy of it seperately, how will the vast majority of people tackle this problem?

I would imagine they would most likely obtain it through some computing magazine / friend, or buy it over the counter. How many would go back to using IE, just as they used to?

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[Bastian]

OK, so they've got the embrace done.

I predict that their REALLY extreme tactic will be to start throwing every "extension" they can think of into IE, especially ones that break compatibility with other browsers and webservers.

Well, every "extension" except for security, that is. =D

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[hype7]

maybe the reason MS have stopped caring is that there is no longer any reason to care.

they offered IE for free in the hope that they could "embrace and extend" the internet - stopping all other browsers, and thereby stopping all other platforms - but it didn't work. so why should they bother any more? there's nothing to be gained by owning the users browser.

on the other hand, owning where they buy all their music from... now that might be a lucrative business to get into...

-- james

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[salvorHardin]

Against safari? They'll probably just employ the same kind of dirty tricks they did against Opera, where they detect the user agent string, and send back broken CSS files.

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[typhoonius]

Or they could make it impossible to uninstall, make it the file manager, require it for security updates, and make the help system dependent upon it.

OH, WAIT. The only way could integrate IE more into my Windows "experience" is if they soldered a big metal "e" onto my ass.

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[mpcooke3]

I'm not sure they stopped caring, I reckon they just need some killer feature like integrating the operating system and the web better to allow people to create decent apps delivered over the web.

Isn't that what Avalon is suppose to be about?

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[MojoRilla]

they offered IE for free in the hope that they could "embrace and extend" the internet - stopping all other browsers, and thereby stopping all other platforms - but it didn't work. so why should they bother any more? there's nothing to be gained by owning the users browser.

There are plenty of reasons to control the browser. For one, it allows Microsoft to control the homepage, which has made MSN viable.

And many web pages still use IE specific HTML markup, and ActiveX controls in web pages, so you can't say Microsoft has been unsuccessful in "embracing and extending" the internet.

Although the press here on Slashdot is that other browsers are making headway, according to user stats from a big non-geek website I have access to, MSIE still has 93.26% of the users.

I don't think Microsoft has found it fruitless to own the browser. They just have completely dominated, so no more effort is required.

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[Naikrovek]

they didn't stop caring, they STARTED caring.

With new technology, the browser is becoming the gui for mail, calendar, search, purchasing... its becoming an operating system in its own right.

with an operating system in your web browser, where does microsoft windows fall? microsoft stopped developing the browser because it started competing with the operating system.

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[Coryoth]

they offered IE for free in the hope that they could "embrace and extend" the internet - stopping all other browsers, and thereby stopping all other platforms - but it didn't work. so why should they bother any more? there's nothing to be gained by owning the users browser.

There is still a lot ot be gained from owning the users browser, because at long last real rich GUI apps are starting to be available over the web. We were promised web applications a long time ago, but all we got were forms and web pages that, while providing an interface were quite slow, and had a very bare bones interface.

Microsofts big new technology advancement for Longhorn is XAML and Avalon which, in theory, brings real fast rich web applications to the world. In the meantime firefox/mozilla is busy with XUL and related technologies (if you want to see what XUL can do, take a look at this site).

Web applications are going to happen. They aren't going to replace locally installed apps entirely, but they will fill niches with, for instance, powerful webmail interfaces (that look and behave like a local GUI), tax calculation apps, calendaring services, and all those simple database frontends etc. The question then, is who is going to provide the architecture for Web Apps? MS desperately wants to be the one to do it - because web applications are potentially completely platform agnostic. If Web applications are all XAML, then you need Windows to use them, and MS strengthens their monopoly. If XUL gets a decent foothold, then any platform that has Mozilla, Firefox, or in fact any XUL implementation (XUL is open source and LGPL, so whoever wants to can implement it), is a viable platform for those web apps.

What MS fears most is a world where a decent chunk of applications are completely platform agnostic, because then people simply won't care about Windows. Lose the monopoly stranglehold, and MS will be in severe trouble.

To keep that monopoly stranglehold MS has to, if not win this latest browser war, at least keep the fight going long and hard enough that Longhorn has significant market share (that's well past the release date), and hence XAML is the most widely available architecture via which to deliver web apps, before Mozilla/Firefox gets any really significant market share.

This war is surprisingly important.

Jedidiah.

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[theantix]

You joke, but with the amount of money that Microsoft makes they could very easily refocus on their browser and make it a lot more competitive. If they added tabbed browsing, popup blocking, and a few other popular FireFox features they would prevent a lot of average Windows users from switching to FireFox.

With all the money they make there, I really can't understand why they _don't_ do this. It makes no sense at all why they'd just give up on their browser like they have.

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[mcrbids]

they offered IE for free in the hope that they could "embrace and extend" the internet - stopping all other browsers, and thereby stopping all other platforms - but it didn't work. so why should they bother any more?

Imagine what they COULD have done by leveraging IE into developing weblications!

The biggest problem with web-based anything is the lack of control you have over the browser. Not coincidentally, this is why development time for web-based applications is quick - the application output is very simple.

For example, I've written a medium-sized application (~40,000 lines) in PHP-GTK and love the control I get over the client experience in the application. User chooses X, I pop up a dropdown list to get more information, pop up an editor that captures their input in real time, etc....

It's hard to impossible to do all this with javascript, but it's sort of what I'm talking about.

Take javascript, make it 10x more powerful, and provide some security measures.

For example, a certificate that would have to be installed in the browser first before scripts from NNN site would operate. Control the distribution of the certificates, and you control access to the application! You could use a bi-directional certificate so that both sides authenticate each other!

Run this over HTTPS and you'd have a damn secure application framework that would allow for:

1) Rapid application development times - On the server it'd be a set of ASP/PHP style scripts.

2) Rich client-ish interfaces that make XUL look tame.

3) Secure by design. Your scripts would only be accessable to somebody with a valid certificate.

4) If sufficiently developed, the javascript replacement could operate offline merely by saving the script to disk. (stretching things a bit, here)

In short, all the advantages of web-based design with all the advantages of client-side design. What's not to like?

They botched it with ActiveX, but it was an attempt at what I'm talking about. Can you imagine trying to fight that?

Java comes close to the above - but it lacks the security features I'm mentioning, and it's operational characteristics are "heavy" - the JVM is large and slow, particularly in low-memory situations.

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[rsheridan6]

There's plenty to gain from controlling the user's browser. Already, they stopped cold Netscape's efforts to "reduce Windows to a set of buggy device drivers," they make your default webpage msn, they automatically send you to MSN search if you enter a bad URL, and some webpages require IE to work properly. If they can get more webpages to be broken in browsers other than IE, that will be the club which keeps the desktop user locked in even more effectively than they already are (it would be enough to make me switch back to Windows).

MS stopped caring because they thought they had won, not because they didn't care about their browser monopoly. Now that they're losing ground, they DO care again. Various MS bloggers have mentioned that MS is worried about firefox and new development is going into IE to try to regain (or protect) its supremacy.

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[killjoe]

XUL is interesting but by and large useless as a real application platform until you can navigate and modify databases with it.

Also it will not gain widespread acceptance until there is a GUI builder and a data binding framework that your average PHP hacker can wield.

XAML will most likely have both of those if and when it comes out.

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[wintermute740]

Anyone tried going to support.microsoft.com and doing a search with Firefox? You've gotta use User Agent Switcher and set it to IE6, and everything displays perfectly fine.

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[abulafia]

You're forgetting the reason they wanted to retard browser growth - to retard the growth of an alternate platform for developing business apps.

That reason to keep other browsers from spreading is still valid - XAML, etc. will take several years to spread. In the mean time, they have a massive hole in the casle wall.

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[leifb]

The only way could integrate IE more into my Windows "experience" is if they soldered a big metal "e" onto my ass.

My God, Man! What are you doing with your computer?

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[DennisZeMenace]

I don't think that'll work anymore because there are just too many people using open-source browsers nowadays, including all Mac users.

Microsoft's enormous mistake was to drop IE for the Mac. Back in the days, when you complained to a webmaster about a webpage not rendering well on Linux, you'd get laughed at. I got even insulted once, about how i had to use a 'serious' browser. Now, when you complain about a page not rendering well on a Mac, webmasters take you seriously because Mac OS gets a lot more respect as a desktop OS.

While there are still web sites out there that don't render well outside of IE, there are a LOT less of them compared to three years ago.

If I were MS, I'd make a huge marketing campaign about a brand new browser, with a different name and all, with all sorts of new features, and make sure you provide a Mac version. If they were smart, they'd release a Linux version too, but god knows pigs will fly when that happens...

-DZM

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[rot26]

In short, all the advantages of web-based design with all the advantages of client-side design. What's not to like?

That it would be slow as crap and would likely break behind poorly implemented or poorly managed firewalls?

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[michaelepley]

I think a new "IE" key is in order too.

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[Lattitude]

Yep, their only option is to differentiate by going non-standard. Ok, more non-standard.

God help us.

Spread the fire

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[Hoplite3]

{knocks on door}
Sir, I'm from the microsoft corporation. I was sent to "upgrade" your browsing experience. Plase bend over and drop your shorts.

No, sir, this isn't really necessary. Our geeks are working on a way to use XAML to automatically download and solder metal on to your ass over the internet. Yep, the future is coming.

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[mcrbids]

Why would it be "slow as crap"? Any more than javascript? We're talking about validating a small cert (what, 2k? 4k?) downloading code to the browser, (maybe, 20-30k?) then rendering. (a la Glade/GTK) There'd be some interpretive code (being a PHP nut I know my language of choice, but think javascript, only not brain dead)

What bloody difference would a firewall make? We're talking about running an app over http/https - which even in a poorly implemented firewall would be obvious where the problem would be, since NO web-pages would display!

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

That file worked around a CSS bug in the previous version of opera.

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[p5]

* watches as a microsoft engineer writes down this suggestion for the weekly upcoming tech meeting.

way to go...

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[Excelsior]

they offered IE for free in the hope that they could "embrace and extend" the internet - stopping all other browsers, and thereby stopping all other platforms - but it didn't work.
Huh? It didn't work? If I had a nickel for every time someone told me they wouldn't move to another OS because they wouldn't have IE, I'd have a lot of nickels.

If you can convince someone to use Firefox today, you increase the chances greatly that they will be comfortable switching to Linux at a later date. It's an easy transition when your browser (and even all of its settings, if you want) goes with you.

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[kisielk]

You mean like ActiveX controls? I can think of many web services that don't work without ActiveX.. particullary some web conference software. However I think most of those are going to eventually have to change and go under. I know we dropped a few at the company I work for because our Unix users couldn't use them in Mozilla. Instead we went with one that had java-based clients

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[zcat_NZ]

Just a minor nitpick; I think if you check a little deeper (use an IE conditional comment to load a 'really-MSIE' image; anything that doesn't load the image is not really MSIE) you'll find that out of those 93.26% quite a significant number are Opera or Firefox users who can't access some sites without changing the browser string.

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[graveyhead]

Web applications are going to happen.

Amen, brother! I'm getting in on the discussion a bit late, but WTF.

I've been thinking about this recently too. It requires an interesting mix of screen-scraping techniques and RAD GUI development. Mozilla's XUL engine is perfect for this.

Most /. readers have probably noticed that many sites offer an RSS (or other RDF format) feed. This is a good start, because it allows a desktop app to get at the structured data without knowing how to parse HTML.

There is a major problem with this, however. Take a look at slashdot's feed. Interesting, yes, but limited. About all it lets you do is create a simple launcher that would link to the details / comments page. You couldn't, for example, put user comments into a tree-like widget very easily. Since /. doesn't provide comments in RSS the app would be very limited.

I've been thinking about solutions for this problem for a long time now. Mozilla is by far the most interesting solution to date. My solution uses XSLT and RDF and only requires a couple hundred lines of script code. The basic flow looks like this:

• start with a plain-old URL, e.g: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/08/143520 1&tid=154&tid=113&tid=114
• Transform the page into a custom RDF/XML format, using XSLT. This simplifies transformation and makes it easy to track HTML updates on the host site.
• Create a 'rdf:xxx' in-memory datasource from the loaded RDF.
• Attach templated components to it, which are notified and refreshed when the datasource is re-read.

This class is implemented in less than 300 lines of Javascript code.

The XUL template system hooks into this perfectly. For example, I was able to write a menu which contains the front-page slashdot stories in about 5 lines of XUL code and about 30 lines of XSLT.

In short, if you haven't already, check out Mozilla as an application development platform. You won't regret it!

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[zoips]

Because communicating with a PHP backend via SOAP from a script is outside the realm of possibility?

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[justsomebody]

As for databases - you can navigate and modify them, there's example on XUL documentation

But second point was a direct hit. That was the reason why I went away when I was testing XUL.

Same goes for mono, except that in mono I can use Glade to at least some point, thanks to GladeSync.cs (terribly slow, but at least I don't need to define variables on my own). It's not a solution but I hope that Novell (or anyone else) will release something like GUI builder and decent IDE (lost my hopes for monodevelop after the license crisis).

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[Ytsejam-03]

Microsoft's enormous mistake was to drop IE for the Mac.

IMHO their biggest mistake was not fixing vulnerabilities in IE in a timely manner. I don't recall hearing much about the marketshare for alternative browsers increasing until after the latest round of IE security problems in the past few months. Since many folks have been hit with Blaster and Sasser, the masses seem to take security updates more seriously. There have been plenty of IE vulnerabilities in the past, but they never seemed to get as much press as they have lately.

Go have a look at the securityfocus.com archives. There are lots of posts about IE vulnerabilities, several of which Microsoft just flat-out refused to patch, probably because some manager at Microsoft did not think the problems were serious enough, and didn't want to "pony up" the resources. The entire company has paid for those decisions.

There was a guy at pivx.com that used to maintain a list of unpatched IE bugs, but the page seems to have disappeared. It's been quite some time since I looked at the list, but in some cases issues went unpatched for *YEARS*! Now, how exactly can Microsoft claim to take security seriously?

A quick google search turned up this page of still unpatched IE vulnerabilities. The list is still quite long.

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[owlstead]

Java does use quite a lot of memory, but so does .NET, and - pardon me - mozilla as well. Actually, I was looking for a Java browser just now, but the only hits I get are for HotJava, which is *completely* deprecated, and ICE, which is commercial.

I've seen an implementation of Mozilla in Java, but I could not get it to run. Still I hope that somebody will find the time to create an open source Java browser. The HTTP part is already there (Apache Jakarta project).

Currently I am busy with a USENET client in Java, after that I might switch to the web browser part. Let's create something that is safe, rather fast, ultra portable and looks like a native application (e.g. the SWT of IBM might do just that).

Java has quite a lot of security features including certificate support, classloaders etc. etc. so that would certainly not be the problem. For speed try the new 1.5 version of Java, its quite a starter, since a lot is cached in advance.

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[killjoe]

No but justy a pain in the ass. Let me explain.

First of all the SOAP layer in PHP is pretty weak. The native implementation does not support transporting complex objects so you are limited to simple types only. Secondly even if you are able to reduce everything to strings you are still left with the tedium of populating data on the screen by hand. There is no elegant binding framework so you can transport objects back and forth between the server and the client and automatically fill in on screen components.

Yes I am talking about a gui to do all that. Somthing along the lines of xcode and the cocoa data binding framework.

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

Your sig is cut off (the last n)

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[Bert64]

http://secunia.com/product/11/
A page showing security vulnerabilities in IE6, theres also a section on older versions and on other products... To quote tho:

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 with all vendor patches installed and all vendor workarounds applied, is currently affected by one or more Secunia advisories rated Extremely critical

And:

Currently, 19 out of 60 Secunia advisories, is marked as "Unpatched" in the Secunia database.

The section "is marked as unpatched" suggests secunia never expected there to be more than 1 unpatched vulnerability in a product at any one time, as there shouldn't be if the developers are responsible.

Re:Protecting the Monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

weblications

Don't ever say that again. Let me guess, Marketing?

Oh goody.

[psbrogna]

Well it's about time- we were damn close to having actual web standards. Glad we dodged that bullet.

Re:Oh goody.

[rootofevil]

standardizing on IE? as a web designer, id rather shoot myself in the face than be saddled with IEs "enhancements" and "features" thankyouverymuch.

whats so hard about loading a transparent PNG anyway?

Re:Oh goody.

[mini me]

whats so hard about loading a transparent PNG anyway?

What's even worse is that IE does support transparent PNGs, if you apply a filter to it. Why can that be the default action for PNGs?

Re:Oh goody.

[maxwell demon]

I guess IE can load a transparent PNG quite well. It just can't display it correctly.

Re:Oh goody.

[LoudMusic]

whats so hard about loading a transparent PNG anyway?

Holy shit! I forgot I had that function now. Firefox r0x0rs my b0x0rs! I'm off to redesign my website (:

Re:Oh goody.

[gkokmdam]

Yes, all the fun would be out of internet that way. I'm just rather tired of the whole thing. I'd love to see firefox win more terain. But unless it's preinstalled on computers and unless it features small patch-like updates iso a full-redownload, it will not be accepted by the general public, I'm afraid. (Not trying to troll, I'm using Firefox and Mozilla all the time, last time I used IE was when my bank forced me to :-( )

Re:Oh goody.

[Allistair]

whats so hard about loading a transparent PNG anyway?

Yes, and what is so hard about loading a jpeg without exposing your system to malicious code? Oh, wait...

Re:Oh goody.

[ricotest]

Because it's slooooow.

Also occasionally the real background (some gray colour) is displayed, usually on repaint.

Re:Oh goody.

[muyuubyou]

whats so hard about loading a transparent PNG anyway?

I'm not sure, but probably it is for them. They had, until very recently:

- JPEG buffer overrun
- BMP buffer overrun
- GIF double-free vulnerabilities

JPEG vulnerability

(BMP and GIF vulnerabilities - see details). Issued: July 30, 2004, updated Aug 1.

Re:Oh goody.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not what people mean when they try to stop the browser war madness. Wars are destructive. Browser wars destroyed web standards because Microsoft and Netscape fought for developers by adding sugar to HTML without thinking about the long term consequences. Developers with the least bit foresight do not want the browser wars back. Browsers should compete, but not fight eachother. Coexistence is what drives webstandards. Capturing developers' minds with flashy stuff -- down that road lies ugly code. Mozilla's goal should be to become a good browser for the user by providing an excellent implementation of standards and a good user interface. IE is irrelevant to that goal. Likewise Microsoft should strive for the same goal. I for one don't want 90% Mozilla market share.

Re:Oh goody.

[Anonymous Coward]

What I'm hoping for that these latest wars have no winner - that would force people to support multiple browsers, and thus some kind of standards.

Re:Oh goody.

[Vampyre_Dark]

And next, .PNG Armageddon!

Re:Oh goody.

[DogDude]

whats so hard about loading a transparent PNG anyway?

I dunno. What's so hard about getting a.click() to work? Netscape/Gecko/Mozilla/Firefox STILL hasn't fixed this one (been broken for at least 4 years), making for nasty DHTML workarounds in some situations. .PNGs don't work? Jesus, use GIFs, JPGs, TIFFs, etc. No big deal.

Re:Oh goody.

[Infonaut]

.PNGs don't work? Jesus, use GIFs, JPGs, TIFFs, etc. No big deal.

Actually it is a big deal. PNG provides many advantages over GIF for both designers and Web users. But because the dominant browser doesn't support PNG properly, even those people who don't use IE are saddled with its limitations.

That's one of the most pernicious effects of monopoly control - the weaknesses of a monopoly product become liabilities to everyone.

Re:Oh goody.

[DogDude]

That's one of the most pernicious effects of monopoly control - the weaknesses of a monopoly product become liabilities to everyone.

That's not entirely true. With Netscape/Gecko/Mozilla/Firefox not supporting the a.click() method, I had to re-do a LOT of pages because I'd get people complaining about this or that not working. Those browsers account for about 5% of our traffic, but was enough to be a royal pain in the ass. In which case, the small guys caused the problem, because they don't conform to the de-facto standard.

Re:Oh goody.

[Infonaut]

the de-facto standard... which is set by the monopolist, rather than by a standards group. I agree that Netscape, et. al. not conforming to the defacto standard is not smart, but I would say it's a much bigger problem when MS doesn't support the standards that it helped the standards body create in the first place. Many web developers don't even bother supporting non-IE browsers any more, so the effect of IE is far greater on the actual coding habits of developers.

Re:Oh goody.

[DarkSarin]

However, as a web developer myself, I pretty code to standard, and then hack for IE. It's a slightly different mentality, but I find that when an agent is fully compliant, it makes it EASIER and FASTER to design for it.

Re:Oh goody.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone have an explanation or example link of a.click()

Google isn't very helpful in this case, because ignores the . and ()

Re:Oh goody.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's something to help with that:

The site is in Finnish, so here are the instructions in loosely translated English:

1.Copy that piece of code in the box into a file with the extension .htc, the name doesn't matter.

2.Make a transparent gif file, and stick it into the same directory with the previous file.

3.Put the line img{ behaviour: url(filepath/filename.htc);} into your css.

voilá! now IE displays transparent pngs (somewhat) properly. The W3C validator may not like the behavior attribute, so you might have to use some scripting to show it only to IE.

Re:Oh goody.

[Infonaut]

code to standard, and then hack for IE.

Agreed. I'm doing that exact thing right now with some CSS -routing around IE after having built it for standards-compliance. But there are huge numbers of web developers who think standards are a waste of time. It's a shame, but it's true. I suppose like in any field there are those who want to do it quick and sloppy and those who are a bit more meticulous.

Re:Oh goody.

[DarkSarin]

Many of them are the result of authoring tools such as Frontpage and Dreamweaver. While wysiwyg editors can be quick, they are also dirty. Even dreamweaver is lacking in a number of pretty darn important ways (such as how it still puts deprecated attributes in table tags, even when XHTML compliance is turned on).

Frontpage is a hack. No further comments.

Quanta, which is an interesting and useful editor, is great, but not as a wysiwyg, which is what most non-technical people want. I don't have any experience with Nvu.

Personally, I use Scite (not caring for wysiwyg myself), but it lacks tag completion for html/css. If someone would fix that little issue, then I would be extremely happy.

The long and short of it is this: those of us who do web development and come from a coding background tend to want to write in code. But those folks coming from no tech or graphic design tend to prefer wysiwyg, which doesn't teach anything about standards.

Either way, standards are important.

Like all good Japanese monster movies...

[Anonymous Coward]

...I dub these new browser wars "Mozilla Vs. Explora".

Re:Like all good Japanese monster movies...

[Lethyos]

No no no, it's more like "Mozira vesus Ekporora". Get your engrish straight, okay?

Browser war

[Anonymous Coward]

Andreessen warned that 'competition could compel the company [Microsoft] to use aggressive tactics to protect its Windows operating system monopoly'.

are they not using aggressive tactics now? In some cases they are using illegal tactics too. So whats new about it?

Re:Browser war

[Bedouin X]

He's probably referring to what happened to Netscape, but again Firefox does not share the same weaknesses as Netscape as they are not for profit.

I'm curious though, wasn't it Andresson saying that the browser war was over less than a year ago? I also recall something about him using IE as well.

Re:Browser war

[Bedouin X]

Sorry to self-reply but yeah he was, but it was more than a year ago:

http://www.macworld.com/news/2002/06/14/browser/in dex.php

What the hell. It's an election year.

Re:Browser war

[Cracell]

browser wars never ended, just died down a little bit, but firefox is being pushed so hard that they have taken the spotlight again but I can't see browsers other then IE on more then 60% of compy's simply because it's bundled

Re:Browser war

[davidsyes]

convolve, absolve, devolve, involve, revolve...

---------
salve, calve, halve, valve...

Three Words

[cryptochrome]

Opera's Not Free

Re:Three Words

[genner]

Sure it is, if your willing to put up with a
single ad being wedged at the top of the screen.

Re:Three Words

[niko9]

In the grand scheme of things, niether is IE ;) AT least with OPera you know what your'e getting.

Re:Three Words

[Anonymous Coward]

> AT least with OPera you know what your'e getting.

What, you get the source code? Thought not.

Re:Three Words

[joper90]

don't care if its not free..
Its the best by far...

Re:Three Words

[Anonymous Coward]

Which I'm not - and based on the popularity of adblocking extensions, I'm not alone.

It also isn't open-source which is kind of important to a lot of people here.

Re:Three Words

[mcovey]

what wars? I haven't head a peep out of MS. I still use opera as I have since version 7 anyways.

Re:Three Words

[adam mcmaster]

Why would I want software with ads embedded in it?

Re:Three Words

[RangerRick98]

And why would I want screen real estate taken up by an ad when I can use Firefox instead?

Re:Three Words

[TykeClone]

I think that most people get the adblocking stuff to rid themselves of popups.

As long as the ads are out of the way and not popups, I don't have a problem.

Of course, I'm running firefox and don't have the flash and shockwave plugins loaded - that gets rid of a lot of the worst ads.

Re:Three Words

[Silverlancer]

No its not. I've used both, and here's what I have to say...

1. Opera eats memory almost as bad as Windows XP does.

2. Opera is slow.

3. Opera has that stupid ad.

4. Opera isn't open source.

5. Opera isn't as well-supported as Firefox.

6. Opera is ugly.

7. Opera is annoying to use--Firefox has a much better interface. Simple is good.

IMO Firefox/Safari are by far the best browsers out--I've tried many others and nothing really comes close. Including Opera. In fact, I'd put IE above Opera, simply because Opera is so damn slow, ugly, bloated, and has that stupid ad...

Re:Three Words

[RangerRick98]

I use the adblocking stuff for inline content as well. I read a lot of online articles, and having to read around ads that are sometimes larger than the article content itself is very distracting. The adblocking removes those and makes the article much more pleasant to read.

Re:Three Words

[Ilgaz]

No its not. I've used both, and here's what I have to say...

1. Opera eats memory almost as bad as Windows XP does.

Disable RAM cache at preferences, it RAPES memory as based on common internet user who wants speed.

2. Opera is slow.

Never heard it, its fast on my 7650 nokia PHONE

3. Opera has that stupid ad.

Sorry they aren't backed by AOL or MS, they must make money.

4. Opera isn't open source.

Some people don't like their code to be copied and pasted at Redmond.

5. Opera isn't as well-supported as Firefox.

Opera is supported by professional QA staff and company. Also there are forums at Opera some people does their best for help, without money. If waiting for support, you should try buying.

6. Opera is ugly.

Opera has skins which you can use.

7. Opera is annoying to use--Firefox has a much better interface. Simple is good.

One of Opera's best things since 3.61 version is the amazing freedom to change interface. You can make a damn complex one or one simple one. I used NO buttons since I used a logitech mouse and gestures.

" IMO Firefox/Safari are by far the best browsers out--I've tried many others and nothing really comes close. Including Opera. In fact, I'd put IE above Opera, simply because Opera is so damn slow, ugly, bloated, and has that stupid ad..."

Stupid AD you talk about also runs Slashdot ads. Its Google.

Where were you working again?

Re:Three Words

[TykeClone]

To be honest, I don't even notice the ads anymore. I guess that I've trained my eyes to just skip over it.

Re:Three Words

[genner]

The mod's have lost there minds again. How is this
redundant? It's the first post here to address the issue.

Re:Three Words

[eugene ts wong]

Because it's faster than Mozilla, and has better features than Mozilla, even though it'll only take up an extra .5 inch when configured properly.

Re:Three Words

[RangerRick98]

Could you cite some sources that support your claims? I'd be willing to consider your arguments if you have evidence

Re:Three Words

[Anonymous Coward]

I used NO buttons since I used a logitech mouse and gestures.

yeah, i'm totally down with the no button interface too. the back and forward mouse clicks make for fast browsing!

another pro to opera is the ability to turn on and off graphics, css, javascript, java, plugins with keystokes.

Re:Three Words

[Celt]

" I think that most people get the adblocking stuff to rid themselves of popups."

ah wtf?, the adblock extenstion DOES NOT stop pop-ups
Mozilla by default has a pop-up blocker, adblock allows you to remove normal adverts such as the one at the top of /. pages.

Re:Three Words

[hkmwbz]

1. Opera fits on mobile phones, Firefox doesn't. Of course Opera is better with memory.

2. Faster than Firefox here. Ever tried going back?

3. So? You hardly notice it after a while.

4. Who cares? I use the best tool for the job. If it's commercial software, so be it. I pick my tools by quality, not by politics.

5. Well supported? What is that supposed to mean? You mean apart from the forums, newsgroups, mailing lists, the commercial company backing it, having to stay ahead of everyone else to survive?

6. Opera 7.5 is a lot prettier than the new Firefox theme... :(

7. Too simple is bad. It restricts me. Opera has a very nice interface, smooth and flexible. I far prefer it to Firefox.

Regarding bloated, that's a lame argument used by fanboys to justify their own browser. Opera is a smaller download than Firefox, even when you remove the exe compression. When a Firefox fanboy starts talking about "Opera bloat" I know he's grasping for straws.

Re:Three Words

[toddestan]

No its not. I've used both, and here's what I have to say...

1. Opera eats memory almost as bad as Windows XP does.

That's because Opera uses the ram for it's cache. If you don't like it, either disable it, or put a leash on it in preferences (the default is to let it go wild).

2. Opera is slow.

Opera is really fast, if you ask me. Firefox is really fast too.

3. Opera has that stupid ad.

Not if you buy it.

4. Opera isn't open source.

Each to their own.

5. Opera isn't as well-supported as Firefox.

Opera is the product of a company. If you are a registered user, they are very happy to provide support. Who are you going to email if you need support for Firefox?

6. Opera is ugly.

Yes, the default skin is ugly as all hell. And Opera has too many widgets that are on by default. Atleast it's skinnable like Firefox.

7. Opera is annoying to use--Firefox has a much better interface. Simple is good.

Opera's interface is highly customizable. Lots of keyboard shortcuts, and mouse gestures too. The original install is very cluttered and annoying though.

Opera is a great browser. I use it, and I have even paid for it. I am a bit concerned about how it's becoming like Windows XP - an actaully decent piece of software that suffers from a horrid default install that has to be heavily tweaked to be the way I like it. My Opera 7.5 install looks pretty much like what Opera 5 did, just like my Windows XP looks like Windows 95. Simple is better.

Of course, the other reason to pay attention to Opera is to see what features are up and coming in Firefox. Who do you think invented things like tab browsing and mouse gestures? How about a built-in pop up blocker?

Just as a note, Firefox is a great browser too, and I recommend it to people all the time. The best part of Firefox is that you can install it and pretty much use it right away if you have any experience with any other web browser. Opera is for people who like to tinker and know what they are doing.

Re:Three Words

[eugene ts wong]

I don't have any sources. I'll tell you what I did to my Opera web browser. I haven't installed Mozilla or the standalone browser for quite sometime.

I'm glad that you asked, though, because what I said about the .5 inch doesn't necessarily make sense. What I meant was that I configured the browser to display text ads only. This means that there are faster downloads of the ads, and the ads are all those Google sponsored ads. Normally, it takes up approx. 1"x6" of screen realestate. To get it into a .5"x12" shape, I disabled the main bar, and the ad bar automatically reshaped to .5"x12". Since I'll still need the buttons that were on the main bar, I added them to the status bar, which sits nicely immediately under the banner ad.

Side note: I can't remember why I have nothing along the bottom of my browser window, but there was a legitmate reason; it probably had something to do with the horizontal scroll bar being on the bottom-most pixel of the window and making it easier to use the mouse.

I don't mean to sound like a zealot, even though I am a Opera zealot, but I find that those Google ads are almost always on topic. This is true, even when they are on web pages, not just the Opera banner.

In short, the banner ad does take space, but it's only an extra .5" of screen height, with respect to the deactivated version of Opera.

Before we get to the speed improvements, I want to say, that I'm not going to beat people over the head when they don't use Opera. It's just that it really upset me when I found myself waiting a long time for the Mozilla browsers to load up a page, and then discovered Opera. All I ever heard is "Mozilla vs. IE" and "GPL yadda yadda yadda". In all fairness, I'll go and try to install it again. I may as well, since I'm doing more web development these days.

Regarding the speed improvements, here are the things that I do to improve speed. Each list item is a completely seperate setting. When I played with even just a few settings in a wrong way, it made my system/browser almost freeze up. When I set them correctly, it's almost as if the system were as fast as a high end computer. I admit that I'm being very subjective and using big exageration. Bear in mind that I have a broadband connection. Anyways, here's the list.
* memory cache: 4MB
* disk cache: 50MB
* cache documents
* cache images
* cache other
* [disabled] empty on exit
* check documents: every 24 hours
* [disabled] always check redirect [for documents, I assume]
* check images: never
* [disabled] always check redirect [for images, I assume]
* check other: never
* [disabled] look for local network machine [server name completion]
* [disabled] try server name completion using prefixes [insert your preferred prefix]
* [disabled] try server name completion using suffix [insert your preferred suffix]
* max connections to server: 1
* max total connections: 16
* [disabled] synchronous dns
* showed cached images only
* [disabled] gif animation
* [disabled] smooth zooming of images
* [disabled] draw images instantly [this took getting used to, but it was worth it because it allowed me to scroll graphic intensive pages as if they were a text page; very useful when graphics aren't important]
* [disabled] enable sounds in web pages
* [disabled] enable pluggins
* enable javascript
* [disabled] enable java
* Courier New [a monospaced font for wherever I can tollerate it; I do use other fonts mostly]
* redraw page instantly [allows you to start reading while the rest of the page is being rendered]
* [disabled] smooth scrolling
* [disabled] show window size

If you try these settings, then please let me know your results, even if they are subjective results.

Re:Three Words

[RangerRick98]

Okay, so what I'm seeing here is that your Opera browser, after a long list of configuration changes, was faster than Mozilla the last time you tried it. I can't help but notice that you made no refernece whatsoever to the "better features," which is what I was really interested in.

Regarding the ads, I'm one who doesn't want the ads there whether they're on topic or not, even if they take up relatively little space on the screen. I can't think of ANY other browser that has ads and requires purchase to remove those ads. I'm afraid the ads are the most compelling reason for me not to use Opera.

I'm not using Opera, so I'm afraid I can't try your settings and compare them to Firefox defaults for load times and whatnot. I would be interested in hearing a list of features present in Opera that aren't present or easily available in Firefox, however.

What features of Opera keep you using it?

Re:Three Words

[Anonymous Coward]

source code!!!!!!!! *makes jerking off motion*

Re:Three Words

[eugene ts wong]

I can't help but notice that you made no refernece whatsoever to the "better features," which is what I was really interested in.
[snip]
What features of Opera keep you using it?

Ah, I see what you mean, now. In my list, I actually mentioned some of those features. I won't mention them again, but I want to emphasize that the level of customization is phenominal, and that Mozilla and Firefox don't allow for that.

My favourite features that don't seem to be available in either Mozilla or Firefox:
* user style sheets
* cutomizable tool bars
* the ability to see no images, only images in cache, or all images [M & F only allow you to see all or none]
* the ability to load only 1 image on a page instead of all of them
* the ability to disable frames [I don't usually use it, but it makes for interesting possibilities since I can design pages with the "noframes" element and encourage users to use both options to see 2 different types of content]
* open closed pages [for when you accidentally close a page and want to see it again; the page opens with the exact same history as it had before; I'm surprised at how often I use this feature]
* sessions [I think this is self-explanitory, so I won't explain]
* start with last page opened [like sessions, but for when the browser crashes or isn't able to shut down cleanly, or just because you always like to continue from before]
* validate this page [when I'm developing and designing, it seems so much easier to browse to that page, then just type Ctrl+Alt+V, than to upload the page by typing in the file name, etc.]
* print preview [M & F seem to have this as well, but they can't render the preview properly]
* 8 toolbars, including the status bar and progress bar
* reload every X seconds [rarely ever use it, but nice to have so I can get first post ;^)]
* go to similar pages [never used it, but I want to develop that habit]
* view links on page [another nice to have thing that I don't use, but should probably use more]
* full screen and handheld screen [don't use it often, but I do use it; Mozilla still shows toolbars in full screen mode; Opera actually removes the ad banner, so that this is *very* ideal for using HTML pages as slide presentations and then posting the content of the internet]

I wouldn't be surprised if there were more things that I liked. Also, I should mention that Konqueror [KDE file manager and browser] has many features like this as well, but not as good.

Also, I should mention that Mozilla has some features that I appreciate in Opera. I neglected to mention them specifically, to save time.

Mozilla has details or features that Opera seems to be missing, such as change profiles, and page info. Those are 2 things that I may not necessarily use at all, but I would really appreciate having the option. Maybe Opera provides the same benefits in a round-about way that I don't know of, but I doubt it.

Well, that's about it. If you have any more questions, then don't hesitate to ask.

Re:Three Words

[RangerRick98]

Okay, that's a pretty extensive list. The following is not to debunk your listing, but merely for your information:

Comes standard with Firefox:
* customizable tool bars
* the ability to see no images, all images, or images only from the site you're viewing (no cache-only option, though)
* the ability to load only 1 image on a page instead of all of them (if you have images turned off, you can right-click the image location and say "view image" AFAIK, but then you have to hit back to get back to the page)
* print preview (I've never had a problem, personally, but I don't print web pages often, so...)
* toolbars (not as many as 8, but I don't know why you'd need that many anyhow :))
* view links on page (part of the page info box, under "links" tab, though you can't do much with it)
* fullscreen (Firefox only shows tabs and scrollbars; I stopped using Mozilla when I found Firefox, so I can't speak to that)

Available via [extension]:
* open closed pages [Tabbrowser Extensions]
* sessions [Tabbrowser Extensions]
* start with last page(s) opened [Tabbrowser Extensions]
* validate this page [Checky]
* reload every X seconds [Tabbrowser Extensions]

Not available (AFAIK):
* user style sheets (though you can specify a default font and color and require that pages use that; I've never used this feature, so I don't know how well it works)
* the ability to disable frames (frames are evil anyway; I prefer using CSS :))
* go to similar pages (there might be an extension that uses Google for this, but I'm not aware of one)
* handheld screen (I'm curious how this works, because I doubt every handheld displays the same way)

Well, it's been very interesting comparing the browsers, and the conclusion I've reached is that Opera and Firefox are both good browsers and the choice of one over the other has mostly to do with past experience and personal taste. To be honest, if Firefox weren't available for Windows, I'd probably be using Opera. :)

Re:Three Words

[eugene ts wong]

Well, it's been very interesting comparing the browsers, and the conclusion I've reached is that Opera and Firefox are both good browsers and the choice of one over the other has mostly to do with past experience and personal taste.

That's my view as well. Maybe I said something else earlier, but that's usually because I get caught up in the moment. I suppose I should phrase it as "Opera is 'better' in general because it gives the user more options up front. However, it doesn't mean that it is better for every person.". The thing that bothers me about KDE vs. GNOME, or Mozilla vs. Opera, etc. is that there is no reason to compare to see which is best. It should be comparing for the sake of ease of use for a niche market. In other words, 1 browser should go after the power users, while another should go after casual users. If I go to an internet cafe, then it's not as if I'm going to need small screen or full screen mode. That full screen mode is only good for slide presentations so that you don't need the leading brand of software, and for when you need a larger look at a page such as a graph.

Speaking of slide presentations, so far the main legitimate use of frames that I can see is for making slide presentations viewable for older and less featureful browsers, without adding links to the main content [ie: "Prev", "Next", etc.]. 1 frame can contain a seperate page of links and the slides can stay untouched. This way, the user doesn't have to keep a seperate copy just for presenting.

Another interesting use is what I call "client-side includes". The idea is that there are large amount of pages, and a list of links will be stored on 1 page, which will be "iframe"ed into each of the pages. To make sure that each page opens up entirely in the window, you just add

<base target="_top">

into the head of the links page. It's not pretty, but for those situations when you need functionality more than beauty, and you don't have the luxury of server-side includes [ie: viewing on your own computer], then it becomes very handy.

I'd never use tables and frames for layout. It'd be strictly for ease of use or maintenance.

Getting back on topic...

I don't even try to print off of my computer anymore, because it's just too hard to get it to work, plus, I try to save paper. That being said, since I design web sites, I use print preview often with the assumption that every page will be printed by somebody. I'm just being careful, that's all. I'm not going to worry about it too much for regular users.

I really don't need 8 tool bars, and only truly use 5 on average, including the status bar and main menu. I think that 8 or more is good only for the sake of reducing clutter. Even if it didn't save space, I still like being able to keep 1 kind of stuff on 1 tool bar. So, having 8 isn't for the sake of being the biggest or having the most, but for the sake of offering as much flexibility as possible.

To be honest, if Firefox weren't available for Windows, I'd probably be using Opera. :)

Cool!

The most important thing is that you aren't using IE. I'm not trying to bash MS, but I can't stand it when people use that browser because of it web standards bugs, etc.

I love Firefox!

[CPNABEND]

It is clean, lightweight, and fast. I've been running it since RC0.9, and recommend it to all of the WIN users. The only problem is that I can't tell whether I am on SuSe or WIN unless I look at my KVM LEDs :^)

Re:I love Firefox!

[Anonymous Coward]

If the screen is blue with white text, you're in Windows.

All MS needs to do to compete is imitate

[winkydink]

Just watch Safari & Firefox development and imitate the functionality. Joe User then has no compelling reason to switch.

Re:All MS needs to do to compete is imitate

[hype7]

Just watch Safari & Firefox development and imitate the functionality. Joe User then has no compelling reason to switch.

I can think of a few compelling reasons...

-- james

Re:All MS needs to do to compete is imitate

[sporty]

Switch from Safari on the mac to IE on windows?

Re:All MS needs to do to compete is imitate

[Anonymous Coward]

Just watch Safari & Firefox development and imitate the functionality. Joe User then has no compelling reason to switch.

Sadly, they probably don't have as much of an incentive to keep improving their standards compliance to keep mindshare among the web dev crowd.

Re:All MS needs to do to compete is imitate

[Mr_Silver]

Just watch Safari & Firefox development and imitate the functionality. Joe User then has no compelling reason to switch.

Which really isn't that much: tabbed browsing and an adblocker and some bug fixes on the CSS support and you're 90% there to most of the requirements that Joe User has.

Hell, Firefox out of the box doesn't come with an adblocker and the extension is not something my mother could configure, so MS probably don't need to have that either.

Not that its going to make me move back, I have far too many plug-ins installed, but I'm not your average surfer (and given that you're reading Slashdot, you probably aren't average either) but for the Mom and Pop, that'll probably do.

Re:All MS needs to do to compete is imitate

[JayJay.br]

Oh yeah, and then we'll find out there's a critical vulnerability in IE's mouse gestures that allows arbitrary code execution if you try to open a link in a new tab.
But then again, Joe User doesn't care about current problems, why should he worry about those? ;-)

No flamewars please. I just want to post it so I can say "told you so!" in a year or two.

Re:All MS needs to do to compete is imitate

[FooBarWidget]

Joe User doesn't care about that kind of stuff. He downloads WinXP SP 2 and then brags about that it's a "huge improvement" and that security problems are a thing of the past.

Whether that's true is another story. But that's the Joe User mentality.

Re:All MS needs to do to compete is imitate

[pete-classic]

The fact that you just accused MS of chasing the taillights indicates to me that we've won.

It's all over but the shoutin'.

-Peter

Re:All MS needs to do to compete is imitate

[forgotten_my_nick]

What do need to imitate though is the security. It is what made me switch. I am more likely to switch to another browser then to switch back to IE.

Re:All MS needs to do to compete is imitate

[winkydink]

Yeah, just look at Netscape. MS chased their taillights too.

Re:All MS needs to do to compete is imitate

[n54]

As long as IE is integrated into the OS they'll always have more trouble than other browsers with security, especially as they need to add new functionality to play catch up, the public is learning this the slow and hard way.

I say let MS try, by the time they are finished trying they'll probably have 25% desktop market share ;)

Joe User cares more and more, especially when the solution is painfully simple. That being said Mozilla and Firefox really need to make upgrading while keeping all settings, plugins, and plugin settings an automated nobrainer (especially mail encryption) :S

Re:All MS needs to do to compete is imitate

[dtfinch]

Mozilla's tabbed browsing has completely changed how I research on the internet.

I scroll through the current page, middle clicking on every interesting link, which opens them in background tabs. Then when I've done with the current page, I close its tab to move to the next page.

This ensures that I don't miss anything and I don't have to mess with as many as 50 windows open at once. I just have 50 tabs at once, all preloading so I don't have to wait at all.

Re:All MS needs to do to compete is imitate

[Muerte2]

I don't know about your SP2 experiences but I've heard from SEVERAL people that installing SP2 has caused huge problems with their systems. This has caused even more people to not even attempt to install the SP to not be affected by the problems.

Just saying "upgrade to the latest service" isn't going to work for a lot of people. Those people that don't/can't upgrade are going to be vulnerable to viruses/spyware and THAT is enough reason to get a lot of people to switch.

Re:All MS needs to do to compete is imitate

[atriusofbricia]

Damn, I must really remember to reload my "Joe User" client's machine that has Gentoo on it. Given they wanted it over Windows for the very reasons of better security and less bloat. They must have been fooling themselves. :)

Re:All MS needs to do to compete is imitate

[david_reese]

Joe User doesn't care about that kind of stuff.

Bullshit. I have had 3 friends who, even if they're computer literate, are really hating their windows boxes. I've tried time and again, to get them to install spybot, firefox, etc. But they won't have it. THey're convinced that these are stopgap measures that really won't accomplish much in the long run. One of them refuses to use his PC networked anymore (even afer OS reinstall). He just views his camera images and listens to his music. Another one is trying out Linux (Lindows/Linspire). The last one is dead-set on spending $3000+ to get a new powerbook + ipod.

These people aren't exactly Joe Schmoe, but they're not powerusers either. They're done with windows. I just wish my work would let me bring in a mactop, otherwise I'm stuck with my windoze one :-(

Re:All MS needs to do to compete is imitate

[pete-classic]

You may not be aware that "chasing the tail lights" was a key MS FUD talking point against Linux (and Free and open source software in general) around '99.

The reversal is delicious.

-Peter

Re:All MS needs to do to compete is imitate

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but obviously those issues are not important to Joe User as they have demonstrated by not switching. Hence why you're point is off-topic re:parent's post and you're just wasting bandwidth...

Re:All MS needs to do to compete is imitate

[Junks Jerzey]

Mozilla's tabbed browsing has completely changed how I research on the internet.

Right, but that's not the original poster's point. His point is that tabbed browsing may be a big feature for the end user, but it's a pretty small feature from the developer's point of view. The IE team Microsoft could *easily* add tabbed browsing without breaking a sweat. And most likely they already have done so internally.

Personally, I think this is what's funny about the IE/Firefox fighting. Security aside (and that's a big issue, so don't think I'm downplaying it), FF's improvement over IE are fairly small things. Now it was a huge job for the FF/Mozilla team to write a browser from scratch, yes, but now we end up with FF and IE having 90% of the same functionality, and it's only 10% used for differentiation. That's not enough reason for Microsoft to lose the "war" (again, security aside).

Re:All MS needs to do to compete is imitate

[FooBarWidget]

Well the people I've heard from say that they haven't got ANY problems at all with SP2, and then continue to praise how good it is.

Re:All MS needs to do to compete is imitate

[FooBarWidget]

And I know more than 3 people who don't mind using Windows. In fact, they even refuse to use anything else. They'd rather spend money on a commercial anti-spyware/anti-virus package, than using Firefox. At least two of them brag about how good SP2 is, and that they're completely happy with IE6 from SP2.

Re:All MS needs to do to compete is imitate

[winkydink]

So if I use Firefox, I don't need anti-spyware or anti-virus sw?????

Re:All MS needs to do to compete is imitate

[FooBarWidget]

It means that you can't get infected by those ActiveX one-click-installed spyware/viruses.

Re:All MS needs to do to compete is imitate

[bicho]

Thats true.
I was glad when mozilla started using it, because Galeon was going downhill...

I still miss the session saving ability of galeon.
(not just (last) one session)
That and tabbed browsing were the things that had me using galeon.

Re:All MS needs to do to compete is imitate

[cgenman]

Ironic that you would say that, as last night I had a user install SP2... Now the user's computer locks on startup, safe-mode or not, which wouldn't require more than a data copy and re-install except that A: opening the PC to get at the HDD voids their prescious warranty and B: installing a new OS voids their prescious warranty.

They're returning the thing, btw, and getting an iBook.

Too late , too little

[Gopal.V]

When my company started putting "Best Viewed in Firefox/Mozilla" on the intranet . I knew that the browser wars are over .

Microsoft may be able to do something however late it is (see .NET and Java) ... but I suspect Mozilla's not as slow as Java in responding , especially when it's Microsoft

Re:Too late , too little

[DrEldarion]

Considering that IE is still by far the most popular browser, if the "browser wars are over", Microsoft has won.

Re:Too late , too little

[Mattygfunk1]

When my company started putting "Best Viewed in Firefox/Mozilla" on the intranet . I knew that the browser wars are over .

When you said your company started putting "Best Viewed in Firefox/Mozilla" on your intranet, I knew that your developers missed the point of web standards and the browser wars entirely.

Re:Too late , too little

[lukewarmfusion]

"When my company started putting "Best Viewed in Firefox/Mozilla" on the intranet . I knew that the browser wars are over."

1. That's very 1997 of you. Good job.
2. The browser wars are not over; that's like claiming that Palestine has suddenly won the conflict over Israel. (Yes, I did just compare Microsoft to Israel and Mozilla to Palestine. Politics aside, I think their positions are similar.)
3. Your company is, at most, a drop in the ocean compared to the [steadily declining] number of IE users out there. You might have fifty users on Firefox, or you might have ten thousand.

It comes down to a business decision. If you force software upon your employees, will they be more or less productive? Will they actually use it, or will they use the alternatives? If your company's employees come to work after checking their email in AOL on Windows 98, they might not be comfortable using Firefox. It shouldn't be that way, but not everybody moves very easily. This is the same reason why OpenOffice.org isn't more popular. Luckily for Mozilla (esp. Firefox), their product has so many advantages that people are willing to undergo the relatively painless process of switching.

Re:Too late , too little

[Anonymous Coward]

ummm...
He works for microsoft

hehehe

Re:Too late , too little

[Mr_Silver]

When you said your company started putting "Best Viewed in Firefox/Mozilla" on your intranet, I knew that your developers missed the point of web standards and the browser wars entirely.

I'd rather that than the other way around.

I pointed out to our intranet developers that their site was a horrible mash of HTML mangled by Frontpage and, as such, looks terrible in Firefox. Their response? "Sorry, we develop for IE only".

Which I suppose explains why they never graduated to working on the main website...

Re:Too late , too little

[ikkonoishi]

Israel to palistine is more like Microsoft to the Unabomber.

The Unabomber wanted to destroy all technology.

Palistines want to kill all Jews.

Re:Too late , too little

[gimpimp]

When my company started putting "Best Viewed in Firefox/Mozilla" on the intranet . I knew that the browser wars are over .

unless you work for Microsoft, I think you're jumping the gun a little bit.

Re:Too late , too little

[216pi]

Your company is, at most, a drop in the ocean

Perhaps he works for Microsoft?

Re:Too late , too little

[UpLateDrinkingCoffee]

Or they want to used tranparent PNG's

Re:Too late , too little

[killjoe]

"Palistines want to kill all Jews."

Why? And when did they start wanting that?

Re:Too late , too little

[Mordaximus]

Note that he said the best viewed notice went up on their INTRANET.

That is HUGE news. Made for IE applications live on the intranet, where it is perfectly OK to mandate IE as the only supported browser, and get away with making non standars compliant web pages not to mention heavy use of Active X and whatnot.

It's prevelant where I work, tons of IE only stuff, to the point where I use Mozilla for everything EXCEPT intranet sites. Which is pretty sad for an industry leading company.

"a drop in the ocean"

Yes, and how many ripples does that one drop create? One company says that they dropped IE on their intranet, and three more realise they can do it too. Best viewed in Firefox means that intranet pages will render properly in just about any browser.

Congrats to the parent poster on his company's accomplishments.

Re:Too late , too little

[rattler14]

I honestly don't understand why the parent poster is getting so much flack for the "Best Viewed in Firefox/Mozilla" quote. NO, it's not being childish. It's saying hey, this site was built on standards. These 2 browsers support such standards and thus are site is best viewed by these browsers.

Yes, they could just put a little HTML/CSS validation icon at the bottom. However, the average user doesn't really understand that. They are just wondering why IE won't display a proper markup on the site they are viewing.

Re:Too late , too little

[arhar]

Yes, I did just compare Microsoft to Israel and Mozilla to Palestine. Politics aside, I think their positions are similar

Politics aside, I think you're a troll.

Re:Too late , too little

[Cro Magnon]

1948?

Re:Too late , too little

[lukewarmfusion]

Why? I was just looking for a decent analogy.

Microsoft is the one with the solid foundation and history, financial backing, and support from outside group (companies, countries, organizations).

Mozilla has reasonable claims to why you should use their browser, but they dont't have the resources and history to be taken as seriously. They are doing a phenomenal job of getting there, but there is much work to be done.

It's not a perfect analogy - but then, you're free to suggest a more appropriate analogy. I completely expected to get modded flamebait or off-topic for even bringing that up. But I don't understand why you think my post was even remotely "troll."

Re:Too late , too little

[arhar]

The reason I think you're a troll is because it's the most likely scenario.

At best, you're an uninformed, ignorant person who likes to run their mouth about things you have no idea about. It's obvious anybody who at least looked at the MAP of the region and saw Israel completely surrounded by enemies can outnumber them by millions, would NOT compare them to Microsoft.

At worst, you're a fanatic who knows all that, but ignores the facts because you're convinced in you being right.

Most likely, you're just a troll looking for attention. Regardless of which scenario this actually is, I don't think I want to waste any more time on this.

Re:Too late , too little

[fnj]

Why [do you call my post a troll]? I was just looking for a decent analogy.

Well, I don't think you found one. I think the reason may have been that there is no moderation choice for "off the wall analogy", and "troll" was the next best choice from a far from perfect list of choices.

So you think Microsoft is like Israel and Mozilla is like the Palestinians (there never having been a Palestine, what are called Palestinians being the descendants of nomadic tribes). Not a "perfect analogy"? It's bizarrely skewed.

Let's see -

Microsoft = mighty and huge. Israel = a tiny population surrounded by overwhelmingly superior numbers.

Mozilla = an effort by underdogs to group together and make a better piece of software than Microsoft, not just focus on their big bad enemy and lament their life. Palestinians = well ... not that!

You suggest that Israel has the support from outside groups. Aside from Jewish organizations and the almost sole national friend (hardly ally) in the US, it is the Palestinians for whom almost every nation and international group is in the tank. No matter what terrorist horrors they perpetrate, which are answered never in kind but only by protective actions.

Re:Too late , too little

[ChristTrekker]

Yes, I did just compare Microsoft to Israel and Mozilla to Palestine. Politics aside, I think their positions are similar.

That's right, because Israel is the huge entrenched monopoly power in the Middle East. Wait, Israel is the recent upstart with only 1% of the land area? I guess you must be wrong.

Re:Too late , too little

[lukewarmfusion]

Obviously my analogy was off. But it's also clear that your personal opinions and perspective has strayed from the point of my analogy.

I was comparing two companies to two "countries:"
Israel - an official state with financial, military, and strong international backing (the US).

Palestine - an unofficial state that desperately fights to gain credibility and power.

Regardless of the surrounding region, which may or may not have any international clout (see the UN voting record for an example), Israel's physical size is not the issue. The issue is the fact that Palestinians fight with suicide bombs and Molotov cocktails while Israel fights with tanks and helicopters. If Israel wanted, they could do some terribly nasty stuff and end the whole thing. If Palestine wanted, they...well, they couldn't end the whole thing. No more than Mozilla can singlehandedly destroy Microsoft. It takes a lot of support from bigger players, spreading FUD (from either side), and using the diplomatic/political/evangelical process to win supporters.

It's not that bad of an analogy for someone to decide I'm a troll.

Re:Too late , too little

[pmsyyz]

"Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network."

-Tim Berners-Lee, Technology Review, July 1996

Re:Too late , too little

[damiam]

How so? It's quite possible to have a perfectly standards-compliant page that looks awful in IE. It's MS that missed the point of web standards by not conforming to them.

Re:Too late , too little

[teromajusa]

Mozilla = an effort by underdogs to group together and make a better piece of software than Microsoft, not just focus on their big bad enemy and lament their life. Palestinians = well ... not that!

I think they have some pretty good reasons to focus on their big bad enemy and lament their life.

Re:Too late , too little

[killjoe]

Bingo.

Re:Too late , too little

[lukewarmfusion]

I posted on-topic and made an analogy that you disagreed with.

You posted two comments that were insulting, off-topic, and failed to address the pertinent issues.

Which one of us is a troll?

Re:Too late , too little

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has secret nukes? I think I just shit my pants.

Re:Too late , too little

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla is not taking aid dollars from sympathetic countries and using most of it for anything but its intended purpose.

Mozilla is not implicitly supporting suicide bombers against neighbouring products, by being wishy washy at best in condemning them.

Mozilla is not run by a group of people that are more interested in a futile exercise of murder of innocent people, rather than taking steps locally, to improve their future.

Your analogy is completely off kilter, and a kick in the teeth to the great people who made the browser that I, and many others here, use and love.

And yes, as another poster pointed out, you are a troll.

Re:Too late , too little

[Anonymous Coward]

This is ridiculous. The parent was arguing in favor of Mozilla, and used an analogy which was not entirely accurate but was still reflective of his own perception of the situation.

Mozilla is up against the 800-lb. gorilla. Is that a more acceptable metaphor to you?

He clearly sees Israel as the "big guy" on the block and Palestine as the underdog. This isn't too far off, despite the number of anti-Israel Arab countries in the region. The fact is, they get away with more than they should because they have the backing of the U.S. Palestine fights with rocks. Israel fights with tanks.

The parent isn't a troll, you are. If you're not capable of disagreeing and having a reasonable discussion then you're a troll. Slashdot is filled with idiots like you.

Re:Too late , too little

[Anonymous Coward]

The only similarity between the two is size. Everything else about his analogy simply falls flat, as I pointed out. Just because Palestine and Mozilla are underdogs does not mean you can equate them.

You are a fool to believe otherwise, and a troll to boot.

Given your lack of intellect, and failure to address my points directly, I am not surprised you don't understand the distinction, and decide to denigrate me instead.

browsers wars BAH

[undoer]

All your browser are belong to us

Re:browsers wars BAH

[Jason Hood]

All your browser are belong to us

Dude, seriously.

FireFox

[jokerr]

Firefox will most likely gain a lot of ground but I don't think it will come out on top. I would love to see it come out on top but Microsoft has a lot of ground it they're not going to give it up without a fight.

Re:FireFox

[urmensch]

IMO - To win the browser war is to have enough market share to make open web standards worthwhile

Re:FireFox

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

Firefox will most likely gain a lot of ground but I don't think it will come out on top. I would love to see it come out on top but Microsoft has a lot of ground it they're not going to give it up without a fight.

Firefox and others don't have to come out on top. There just needs to be a significant presence of browsers other than IE on the net to negate Microsofts ability to abuse. When 98% of browsers are IE, they can basterdize standards and it looks like the 2% are the screwed up ones. If several other browsers are largely in use (don't need to be #1) then it will be more apparent which browser is actually screwed up and not following standards.

Well, I can see it in Safari, and Joe can see in Firefox. Sally says it works with Opera. How come it looks so weird on your computer?

Re:FireFox

[sandyb]

Firefox and others don't have to come out on top. There just needs to be a significant presence of browsers other than IE on the net to negate Microsofts ability to abuse. When 98% of browsers are IE, they can basterdize standards and it looks like the 2% are the screwed up ones. If several other browsers are largely in use (don't need to be #1) then it will be more apparent which browser is actually screwed up and not following standards.

Well, I can see it in Safari, and Joe can see in Firefox. Sally says it works with Opera. How come it looks so weird on your computer? [Q]

And the same goes for generall O/S security.

You have just outlined why M/S do NOT want this to happen.

Written in Firefox without adds and that horrible flash.

1 Important point that will keep me out of IE. In Firefox I can adjust the text size so I can see it, for me a MAJOR, selling point.

S.

we should be safe

[WormholeFiend]

as long as Microsoft does not implement a system like the one in the Gynoids in Ghost in the Shell 2, we should be pretty safe from lesser agressive tactics they use to protect their OS.

I think the whole virus thing is really helping

[hsmith]

as bad as it sounds. You add browser hijacking, security holes in MS OS's volla!

MS needs to unhook the browser from the OS, i think this turned out to be a major assbiter for them now. Becuase it is so intertwined they have allowed the holes to become easily exploitable.

maybe they will finally rewrite IE and allow for it to be better? but lets not cross our fingers

Re:I think the whole virus thing is really helping

[Nikker]

You forget one thing M$ cannot under any circumstances let IE go from the OS. That is the entire reason why they are allowed to send out coppies of it right now with your new machine.

By Microsoft taking IE out of the deep depths of the OS all of a sudden you have an "external" browser. Sure the OS will benifit from security and a smaller foot print, but who will be able to say "it cannot be removed from the OS because with out it the system doesn't work"

That is why I think M$ is doomed to carry this monkey on their back and apparently after having it for the past 9 years they have no idea how to isolate it from the os, or just dont want to.

Not surprising

[Schweg]

This issue seems to have come to a head in the past year or so, particular in the corporate environment.

I am IT director for a small division of a company near Philadelphia, and the problems caused by IE in our environment have increased greatly in the past year. We spend more time than ever fixing problems caused by spyware in particular.

This also falls into a timeframe when the browser alternatives have been getting much better (Mozilla, Firefox). We are currently planning to move everyone to Firefox as their default browser once it has been released as 1.0 or better.

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, now every web app you have will require a speprate login. Its easy to move off of the IE browser buy integration takes a lot more work. As in IE you can pass the Windows Login Information via the browser. Good Luck though.

Re:Not surprising

[Schweg]

Our web apps already use a separate login that is database driven and single sign-on for all of the applications, with Apache2 as the web server, so that's not much of an issue.

I've gotten to make a lot of the policy decisions about these issues, because I'm also one of the primary developers here.

Re:Not surprising

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

I have a small office, ~10 desktop computers. But I have already moved everybody over to Firefox. I think situations like yours and mine will spur much of the growth that we're going to see by Firefox and other browsers.

First of all, I don't expect the average user to understand the implications of using I.E. And I don't expect them to know that they have alternatives. An administrator can make a blanket decision and override these factors.

This initial move by large businesses has to happen to make it unnacceptable to make non-standard web pages. Any professional web designer worth his salt will make a page that works with every conceivable browser. But many people rely on FrontPage and other such filth. It must become taboo to use Microsoft-Only extionsions on a page. With that advantage taken away from MS, the real fight can begin.

Re:Not surprising

[Schweg]

I agree, the small/medium businesses will be able to move sooner, since they don't have the inertia of large companies.

Our situation is a bit larger, about 50 desktops will need to be moved, but still a small business situation.

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummmm... Firefox has supported NTLM authentication for a while now.

Re:Not surprising

[antiMStroll]

If your software permits run Windows as if it were Unix, grant desktops "User" permissions only and always reboot before logging in as admin. Poof! Spyware issue gone. Works for our ~50 2k machines, three years without a problem. I do the same at home with the same results.

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this comment a troll? It sounds just as good as half the other posts on this thread. So maybe redundant would be more appropriate but troll it is not.

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so you're running an IT department in a Windows shop. I'd like to pose the following questions:

Are you using Active Directory, or something similar with group policy capabilities?
Do you have a decent firewall blocking connections initialized from outside of your LAN?
Any form of antivirus software, just to be on the safe side?
Update your systems weekly? monthly? ever?
Why exactly do you give end users permission to install their own selection of software?

Your browser won't compensate for a poorly-run network. First, find a way to lock down your systems.
Get your sysadmins up to speed on how to properly maintain a Windows domain, THEN worry about what browser end users are using to download Hotbar and WeatherBug. Oh, and for the record, you can get most of the things I listed above done in a month with one competent intern.

Re:Not surprising

[Schweg]

- Still currently an NT domain, due to some parent company issues (but if they keep dragging their feet, we'll probably go AD without them).

- We've had a firewall in place for years, blocking both inbound connections, and outbound connections that we don't want (such as SMTP that isn't going to one of our email servers).

- We have a corporate version of Symantec, so updates are automatic and centrally managed. And, yes, someone does track any issues or problems that come up. Note that antivirus vendors dragged their feet for a long time on dealing with spyware issues.

- We run an external mail server (on Linux) outside the corporate-mandate Exchange server, which filters incoming mail via Mimedefang and SpamAssassin.

- Systems are updated roughly on a bi-weekly basis, more often if critical issues come up.

- So they can install games, of course! Seriously , the worst problems are with management execs who won't put up with not being able to install software on their own machines. This is more of a business issue than a techinical one. Plus, not all of the current exploits actually require permission to install software to cause problems on a system, or the network it is connected to.

Re:Not surprising

[JonKatzIsAnIdiot]

His comment isn't the problem, it's his sig.
-1 Does not conform to the Slashbot hive mind.

"Aggressive tactics"

[ARRRLovin]

You mean, like actually putting some developers on IE and shining it up a bit? At least give it a bit of XP flavor or something, call it IE 2005 or something.

Re:"Aggressive tactics"

[Anonymous Coward]

Never, ever underestimate what bgInc. will do. They will amaze you with their sheer lack of any scruples whatsoever, because they are a bunch of gangsters, with a gangster culture that comes directly from billy bathgates himself. The only 'innovation' that ever comes out of Lugburz is creative new ways to fuck over the competition and foist their monopoly shoveware on the users.

To anyone who thinks 'oh that's sour grapes' or 'oh your just jealous' or 'we've heard that a million times' I say, investigate the history of this company (and be astonished). Eternal vigilance is a must in this case. bgInc. is a festering cancer on the IT industry and should be shot daily at dawn.

Opera costs money

[Anonymous Coward]

Simply put: Opera costs money, so it has only a tiny market share.

Whilst it is indeed a very good browser, and I use it myself as my main browser - firefox is fast catching up with it.

Re:Opera costs money

[Anonymous Coward]

ummm... what do you mean by that? I was under the impression that pretty much every smart phone from anyone that counts was shipping with Opera these days. If it's not shipping with Opera, it's at least the only browser which runs reasonably well on them.

From what I can tell, I've read that approximately 5 times as many mobile phones are shipped each year than computers. So I would imagine that altough MS has the desktop thing nailed, on the small devices, Opera is winning, it appears from their last quarterly report that they claim 2 million phones and PDA's. It also appears from their home page that they've been scoring contract after contract after contract to provide browsers on most every other smart phone which has been announced lately.

This tells me that Firefox has a lot more to go to catch up with it.

Also, I recently saw a chart of Opera's memory usage. It manages to have about 1.5 megs overhead + data usage of a footprint on phones. So if you're on a simple page, it's probably only using 1.7 megs. On a really complex page, it's still using less than anyone else.

So if any other browser can do what Opera's does (don't even say netfront, tried it, it's getting better, but frankly, good support for Japanese at the expense of functionality is a joke) then I'd like to know. Microsoft's browser on the PDA/Smartphone doesn't even count as a browser. It's pathetic.

So when it comes to market share, I would say that on Windows, Moz/Fox probably are/will beat out Opera. On small platforms, Firefox will need years for that.

Re:Opera costs money

[Taladar]

Firefox might be catching up in market share but it has a long way to go till it reaches Opera in Usability. It might be a lot better than IE (everything is better than IE) but when using the UI I get the feeling I am using some early beta version of a browser where nothing fits in right and important features are missing (important to me as a Opera User who can not live without some of Opera's features I've grown used to like e.g.opening all pages after a crash)

I use Windows on my laptop...

[dodongo]

And I certainly don't browse with IE; I use Firefox. I use Windows on my laptop because it's most convenient for what I do. Furthermore, it's also convenient just to have a Windows box lying around :)

That said, I use SuSE 9.1 on my desktop and I love it dearly. I wouldn't go back for any reason. Yes, there's still the occasional glitch or issue I don't know how to resolve, but I'm fine with that.

Microsoft needs to understand, though, that if any sort of aggressive monopoly protection significantly affects the way in which I use my laptop computer, WindowsXP SP 2 will be going the same way as the Windows XP on my desktop: right out the, er, window.

HypeWars

[Doc Ruby]

Maybe the browser wars are back, but that gasbag Andreessen is clamoring to be back at any rhetorical cost. He hasn't done anything useful since he butchered HTML with the badly coded tag, which he couldn't even code himself at NCSA. Since then, he's gone from expensive blowhard spokesmodel for the biggest IPO in history, to has-been blown '90s dude. Only _Wired_ even listens to him anymore.

Re:HypeWars

[ricotest]

Your HTML seems to have disappeared :) What tag did he create?

Re:HypeWars

[Doc Ruby]

Whoops - "should have used the Preview button" ;(. He created the <IMG> tag, although he couldn't code it himself. He asked his programmer to create it, who balked with "but that will destroy the Internet!", but was convinced when Andreessen told him to limit it to 32x32 pixel icons. Andreessen took delivery, hacked out the pixel limit, destroyed the Internet, and rode the Mosaic wave to fame and fortune - the rest is unwritten history. The true story of why the <IMG> tag is the abomination that destroyed not only the Internet, but HTML and page layout.

Re:HypeWars

[jvj24601]

I did a Google search on this topic, and the first link returned was the start of an email thread that turned out to be insightful reading on the key guys (Andreessen, Tim Berners-Lee, and many others) in early 1993 regarding the evolution of hypertext, HTML, and other related topics.

Re:HypeWars

[Doc Ruby]

"let the browser do what it can"

He screwed us all forever.

Re:HypeWars

[Anonymous Coward]

The true story of why the <IMG> tag is the abomination that destroyed not only the Internet, but HTML and page layout.

Yeah, I sure do miss the Internet.

Re:HypeWars

[An. (Coward)]

The true story of why the <IMG> tag is the abomination that destroyed not only the Internet, but HTML and page layout.

<blink>Hi. Remember me?</blink>

Re:HypeWars

[PetoskeyGuy]

When all you have is a hammer, ever problem look slike a nail. ;)

The browser wars hammer

Re:HypeWars

[protohiro1]

Could you explain to me how the tag destroyed the internet?

Re:HypeWars

[Doc Ruby]

It's kind of a facetious remark, but it rings true. The Internet content signal:noise ratio used to be a lot better. Even Slashdot, for all its faults, is a forum vastly superior to most on the Net. The tag made it all possible. Though the porn is better now, and the banner ads were never this good. The Internet is dead, long live the Internet.

Re:HypeWars

[Doc Ruby]

I miss the old Internet, though I still love the new one. YMMV

Big Bad Wolf?

[BalorTFL]

Andreessen warned that 'competition could compel the company [Microsoft] to use aggressive tactics to protect its Windows operating system monopoly'."

I dunno about the rest of you, but to me this line sounds suspiciously like, "If you don't anger it, maybe it will leave us alone and not hurt us." Is he advocating that all the non-IE browsers just give up and move on? That's not what I call a browser war.

Re:Big Bad Wolf?

[kahei]

Erm, what he is doing is portraying MS as a menacing, hostile force. Which is kind of his job. In other news, MS spokesmen portray Netscape in a negative light...

Re:Big Bad Wolf?

[antispam_ben]

I dunno about the rest of you, but to me this line sounds suspiciously like, "If you don't anger it, maybe it will leave us alone and not hurt us."

This seems like appeasement, like saying "A vote for John Kerry ls a vote for the terrorists."

http://boortz.com/images/funny/global_test_kit.jpg

Re:Big Bad Wolf?

[Tarwn]

It sounds to me like he [Andreessen] somehow got lost when he was trying to find the definition of "browser" and ended up in "OS".

Please, someone explain to me how Firefox is going to hurt 'Windows operating system monopoly'...Will using Firefox instantly make my computer run Linux? Or will it somehow re-route all the MS Windows purchases to another site? (oh, well, actually...guess this ones possible)

The only way Firefox is going to threaten the MS Windows OS monopoly is by getting people to use an open browser, and while that may soften them up to using other open software, I don't see anyone adding file system, drivers, et al to Firefox anytime soon. Apparently he read that old "The browser is embedded in the OS" argument of MS's backwards andthinks that somehow if he isn't using IE he isn't using Windows...

Sorry, had to get that off my chest :D

Actually, maybe he is bitter about Netscape not winning the first time around so he is trying to blow the new browser battle out of proportion to make MS come back and try to squash it [da Fox] even harder....could be he's just bitter. In my book bitter is still better then ignorant :P

-T

Heh

[Ikn]

Microsoft can use all the tactics they can come up with, but I don't think Firefox is going anywhere.

Not Until IE is Unbundled

[dekemoose]

It's foolish to think that alternative browsers will ever have more than a few percentage points as long as users have what appears to them be a perfectly good browser sitting on their computer when they unpack it from Dell/Gateway/Whatever. We're talking about people who for the most part don't have the competence to download security fixes, let alone downloading a new browser. Just as Windows is synonymous with computers for most people, IE is synonymous for the Internet. I'll believe the browser wars are back when Dell (oor similar) bundles Firefox with their machines.

Re:Not Until IE is Unbundled

[savagedome]

IE is synonymous for the Internet

When you search Google for the word internet, the first hit is IE home.

Re:Not Until IE is Unbundled

[Dutchmaan]

One would think that with the "security focus" that Microsoft is currently using, that removing IE's ties to the OS would be beneficial.

After all how many security holes have been IE related.

IE seems more like a liability in the "security age" than a tool for forcing people to adopt MS standards.

Re:Not Until IE is Unbundled

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

We're talking about people who for the most part don't have the competence to download security fixes, let alone downloading a new browser.

Shouldn't the automated security patch downloader on Windows install Firefox for you?

Re:Not Until IE is Unbundled

[Anonymous Coward]

But eventually, those people that are not even able to run Windows update screws up their system, then call their friend or even paid technician, and then they fix the thing, download the updates, and EVENTUALLY installs and recommend Firefox.
On the other hand, I didn't see yet figures about sales of PC with Linspire/Xandros/whatever preinstalled, but eventually those can also rise the numbers of Firefox, or at least use Konqui or something else and lower the numbers of IE.

Re:Not Until IE is Unbundled

[msisden]

You don't think that large corporations installing additional browsers will have any impact?

I work in the IT department of a university, and we currently have Firefox installed on all the machines we manage. We actually install Firefox on any machine missing it before we do anything else with a computer, because we do not like using an insecure browser. While Firefox might not be entirely secure (then again, what is?) but it is much better than IE.

Currently we are working on a way to remove as much of IE as possible (which IS possible, just a lot of trial and error so as not to break other programs that are needed) at which point Firefox will become the defacto browser.

Re:Not Until IE is Unbundled

[thenextpresident]

Hehe, but searching for 'web browser' brings up Mozilla.

Just found that amusing.

Re:Not Until IE is Unbundled

[Vicsun]

Untrue. Most people I know use Winamp instead of Windows Media Player, despite the fact that the latter is integrated into Windows and can't be uninstalled. Just like IE. All that needs to happen is for Firefox to acquire a critical mass. If/when that happens people will start switching.

Re:Not Until IE is Unbundled

[jsebrech]

There was a time everyone had netscape, and it came bundled with all isp subscriptions. Then the isp's started bundling IE, and people switched away. If the isp's decide the security headaches from DoS drones and spam bots are too much, they'll start bundling firefox with all their new subscriptions, and push it towards existing clients, and you'll see a big leap in marketshare. Corporate browsing works very much the same way. Where you've also got to take into account people tend to use the same product at home as they do at work, so if corporations start advocating firefox (which I fully expect post-1.0), then you're going to see a wave of home users switching as well.

Re:Not Until IE is Unbundled

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, slashkids, your new homework assignment is to googlebomb so that the first result for "internet" is Firefox.

Go get 'em.

Re:Not Until IE is Unbundled

[l0b0]

But, consider cloning the EU/EC Media Player bundling case for IE, and voilá! I believe this will happen as soon as government agencies all over the world start realizing the security and productivity risk IE poses. And when non-power users have to manually download and install a browser, IE will be in the ß#!7 :)

Re:Not Until IE is Unbundled

[umeshunni]

It isn't. Joe Schmoe doesn't want to use a web browser. He wants to use the internet.

Say it ain't so

[ZoneGray]

Holy cow! Microsoft is going to start using agressive tactics? How will we ever survive?

Re:Say it ain't so

[crhylove]

That's a GREAT weezer song.

News to Me

[Phroon]

"Andreessen warned that 'competition could compel the company [Microsoft] to use aggressive tactics to protect its Windows operating system monopoly'."

Wow, they weren't doing this already?

Gbrowser

[fbrain]

It will be interesting to see if google gets involved in this war. I hope google don't have adverts in the browser like the version of opera i saw a few years back. Unless ofcourse the browser does something radical and new that I wouldn't mind paying (looking at adverts) for.

Riiiiiiggghhttt

[Anonymous Coward]

Marc Andreeson is someone to listen to .. His browser has sucked ass for the last 5 years...

He should know better than anyone... Lets take advise from a guy who couldn't keep his browser competing.

*sigh* "Best Viewed"?

[Anonymous Coward]

When my company started putting "Best Viewed in Firefox/Mozilla"...

Why do people continue to insist on stupid "Best viewed with X" labels. Your website should be developed to display properly on any standards-compliant browser, and not be restricted to a particular platform or application.

Why not put up one of those "Try Firefox" icons instead of implying that other standards-compliant browsers (namely Opera) might have trouble with your poorly-designed site?

Browser Wars Are Good...!

[mlauzon]

In my opinion the browser wars are good for innovation, and if they are starting again M$ will have to really innovate or their browser will die...yes I currently use Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and M$IE; but Opera had first what Mozilla and Mozilla Firefox have started to get over the last year.

Alternative browsers? Who knew?

[The I Shing]

I don't know about the rest of you, but I still find myself having to explain what a web browser is to 90% of the people I know that use the internet. Many of these people think that their web browser is called "MSN" or "Yahoo." They pull up a portal site as their home page and actually enter URLs into the search window and wait for the portal site to give them the link. I try to tell them about the wonders of Firefox, and they stare at me blankly and say, "But I'm perfectly happy with Yahoo."

Re:Alternative browsers? Who knew?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you've hit that on the head. My wife, admittedly not the most tech savvy person around, even understands the difference, but most of the people she works with do exactly as you say- click the big "e" on the desktop and type the address they want to go to INTO Yahoo's search box. Then they wade through the results to find a link that they can click on to bring them to that page! It's absolutely pathetic. My wife looks like a goddamn computer wizard compared to these people...

Re:Alternative browsers? Who knew?

[mooingyak]

I actually had a reverse shocker on this topic this past weekend. I was getting a haircut, and naturally, you chat with the barber (is there a separate term for male and female haircutters? This one was a woman. Do I still call her a barber?). She asked what I do for a living, and I told her that I'm a computer programmer. She started talking about how she knows so little about computers and that any time she has a problem with (here's where she got my full attention) "Internet Explorer" she always has to call up her nephew and have him work it out.

People seem to know, or are learning, about the distinction between the internet itself and web browsers.

Re:Alternative browsers? Who knew?

[Wordsmith]

I'll beat that. My girlfriend (insert slashdotter having a gf joke here) is, like most 20somethings, vaugely computer literate - enough to get around on the net but not enough to, say, edit the windows registry or know what an MBR is.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, she decided she needed to check a train schedule online. I watched her bring up a slightly out of date version of mozilla and get our schedule! "I HATE Internet Explorer," she told me.

Furthermore, thanks to her tech geek brother, she knows that having a router sit between her computer and dsl line is a good thing. She doesn't quite understand what ports are or what a hardware firewall does, but she knows that without one she's vulnerable to all sorts of nastiness. The first thing she asks people when they're talking about going online is "Do you have a Linksys? What brand?" which is a little off, but hey, good enough for me.

Re:Alternative browsers? Who knew?

[mdrn28]

Sounds like a keeper. :-)

Re:Alternative browsers? Who knew?

[rts008]

Kiss her ass, Agree with her, make her happy, etc.-definately a KEEPER!

Re:Alternative browsers? Who knew?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes entirely computer-illiterate people can suprise you.

After the first time I installed Mozilla for her (because she wasn't seeing some icons in some discussion group correctly in IE), my (now) ex-gf actually started preferring Mozilla and even installing new versions on her own! She was also declaring that she hated Microsoft (whom she equated with IE), and wanted me to install Linux on her machine (nevermind that she had only heard of Linux - my machines that she had used were FreeBSD and MacOS X, although I did explain to her that Linux would, to her, be indistinguishable from FreeBSD).

Re:Alternative browsers? Who knew?

[Brandybuck]

I don't know about the rest of you, but I still find myself having to explain what a web browser is to 90% of the people I know that use the internet.

You need to get out more then. 90% of the people I know have no problems understanding the word "browser".

Re:Alternative browsers? Who knew?

[Spoing]

1. "But I'm perfectly happy with Yahoo."

I encounter similar statements. Most people think that they have to set the browser home page to the ISP they are using and click on things from there.

Here's what I found: I haven't talked anyone into using Firefox or Mozilla, let alone Linux. Don't tell them how wonderful it is...they won't get it!

Here's what works;

Ask them if they have problems with pop-ups.

Ask them if they have problems with 'the Internet'. Get details on these 'problems'.

If either answer is 'yes', ask them what sites they like to go to.

Install Firefox, and add those sites to the Home page; create tabs for each site, bookmark the tabs, use that bookmark folder as the user's home page.

Import IE settings.

Show them this new program. Show them how easy it is to click on the tabs for each web site.

Point out that there are no popups.

If necessary, tweak Firefox to 'fix the problems' encountered with IE.

Having said all that, I can't get my older sister to look at anything but IE...while about a month ago two people outside of work have asked me for help in installing Firefox and one other person asked me to install Linux after I showed him Firefox and mentioned Linux in passing. (This last person is a total novice; hadn't turned his computer on during most of last year). All are happy and have not switched back to IE.

Re:Alternative browsers? Who knew?

[Anonymous Coward]

This one was a woman. Do I still call her a barber?

Barberella?

Re:Alternative browsers? Who knew?

[Anonymous Coward]

is there a separate term for male and female haircutters?

Bar-bo-bot!

Re:Alternative browsers? Who knew?

[chgros]

You need to get out more then. 90% of the people I know have no problems understanding the word "browser".
Well, maybe YOU need to get out more...

Re:Alternative browsers? Who knew?

[siliconjunkie]

This one was a woman. Do I still call her a barber?

My ex-wife worked in a hair salon, and I kinda wondered the same thing...it appears to break down like this:

1. If there is a stiped pole (occasionally of the spinning variety) in the front of the hair cutting establishment the person doing the hair cutting is referred to as a "barber" regardless of sex.

2. In nearly all other hair cutting environments, the person doing the cutting is refered to as a "stylist".

I could go into all sorts of stereotypes involving old guys who used to be in the military (barbers) and men in leather pants with spiky hair (stylists), but i wont go there.

Re:Alternative browsers? Who knew?

[Brandybuck]

Huh? Are you SERIOUSLY saying you believe that 90% of Internet Explorer users do not know what a browser is? Come on! My mother, who is the world's dumbest computer user, knows what browser is.

Re:Alternative browsers? Who knew?

[Tiram]

They pull up a portal site as their home page and actually enter URLs into the search window and wait for the portal site to give them the link.

Is that where they come from?! I regularly see the URL to my home page listed in the search strings section in my Web stats, I could never understand why someone would search for a URL!
/me understands a little more now

So What?

[PincheGab]

OK so if new browsers want to take "marketshare" from IE, then they are going to have to handle pages exactly as IE does... As opposed to the old days when IE had to be compatible with Netscape when Netscape was the leader.

Also: What market share? If browsers are freely-available, is it really a "market"?

Now that IE is free as in beer and is the 900-pound gorilla, what will make people switch to alternatives en masse? Are security scares enough motivation? My experience is that "Normal" people seem to care little about the "backdoor of the week" syndrome, and they feel specially secure when they have turned automatic updates on

So, why will people switch?

Re:So What?

[urmensch]

So, why will people switch?

Because they will ask me to clean the spyware/pr0n hompage off their computer and I will tell them that I'm going to install a browser that won't let that junk though.

Re:So What?

[Anonymous Coward]

So could you say the same for free IE?
"If Browsers are freely-available, is it really a 'market'?"

on the last paragraph,
Because using their auto-updated machines still results in slower performance from their new machines while their friend who has firefox, or other browser with the identical machine has no slow down.

Re:So What?

[Anonymous Coward]

"handle pages exactly as IE does"

You mean like buggy, half-implemented CSS? Granted, Firefox doesn't have -all- of the CSS specifications working, but it certainly has more than IE! Why, in over four years, has IE not added support for :hover on elements other than the anchor (<a>) tag?

You mean like non-standards compliant CSS, like scrollbar colors? There's a reason this isn't a standard: it's only useful on the windows platform!

You mean like not being able to implement translucent PNGs without a headache?

You mean like implementing active-x controls so they can get the -full- experience of IE?

No. Quite simply, no. One of the things that I've used to convince people to switch - and with better effet - is demonstrate how different the web looks with firefox. And not just the no popup ads thing: I point them at sites which demonstrate some really fancy CSS tricks, none of which work in IE. When they ask me why no other website uses such things, I tell them that it's a simple matter of there being so many IE users. Why code a page if it can be viewed on less than 15% of the PCs out there?

The only answer I can think of, is for web developers to start putting buttons on their sites. Remember back in the first browser war, when people would put 'best viewed in IE' on their site? Yeah. Start doing that.

Also, start putting buttons that say you are HTML and CSS standards compliant, after running your site through the w3c checker. That way people can see that the site is standards compliant and it is their browser that is causing them to not get the fullest from their browsing experience.

This and several other things need to happen. Wishful thinking says IE needs to be unbundled from windows - but we all know how likely that is.

The other possibility is ISP endorsement. When Earthlink shows up at a user's doorstep to install their new high speed internet, they should suggest to the user that they shop around for different web browsers. Let them know they have a choice.

Include addresses to several different web browsers on any pamphlet that they give to customers and potential customers.

User education is the key.

Re:So What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why?

Mom: "My computer's acting slow. Do you know what's wrong with it?"
Me: "Probably spyware or viruses. Do yourself a favor and blow them all away with a anti-spyware/anti-virus software."
Mom: "How did I get them? I never clicked to download or install any of them."
Me: "You're using Outlook Express and IE, right? Carefully crafted emails and websites can install things without your permission."
Mom: "Is there any way to avoid that?"
Me: "You have two choices: shut off the computer or install this other browser called Firefox. Since you have all your calendaring in Outlook Express we'll deal with that at a later date - just don't click on any email that isn't obviously from someone you know."

That is how you get people to switch. Grassroots effort.

Re:So What?

[mobby_6kl]

> If browsers are freely-available, is it really a "market"?

Yes, it is just like any other market, except that most of the browsers are free. Browsers are products and the devs want to convice more users to use their browser. The initial cost isn't the only one, there's also the cost of downloading, installing, getting used and making shure your favorite sites work, etc.

Re:So What?

[PincheGab]

Mom: "My computer's acting slow. Do you know what's wrong with it?"
Me: "Probably spyware or viruses. Do yourself a favor and blow them all away with a anti-spyware/anti-virus software."
Mom: "How did I get them? I never clicked to download or install any of them."
Me: "You're using Outlook Express and IE, right? Carefully crafted emails and websites can install things without your permission."
Mom: "Is there any way to avoid that?"
Me: "You have two choices: shut off the computer or install this other browser called Firefox. Since you have all your calendaring in Outlook Express we'll deal with that at a later date - just don't click on any email that isn't obviously from someone you know."

That is how you get people to switch. Grassroots effort.

Ok, but what about the other person who looks at the same issue and then decides to, instead of switching away from IE, install SpyBot (which is free), plus a great free (for home use) antivirus (Avast Home Edition).

These seem like steps one should take no matter what browser one uses. SpyBot can even trap spyware right before it's installed... So if one went thos route, there is little incentive to switch away from your browser, which works, and whose interface you are familiar with.

Re:So What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly the route my employer seems to have taken after a major virus epidemia last month. Ad-aware installed on every machine but the main suspect, IE, still offered as the only browser available.

And now for something totally different: "browser" - "interface you are familiar with"? Every time I hear someone at work complain about their "Internet", I install Firefox and tell them to never ever open IE again. The result: zero complaints, n happy Firefox users. And now I'm talking about middle-aged humanists with no interest in computers whatsoever.

The missing link: Distribution Channel

[otisg]

Firefox & Co. are coming back, and that software is indeed technically superior to IE. However, Mozilla foundation still misses one crucial piece of the puzzle: a distribution channel. Until somebody with a big distribution channel jumps in and helps Mozilla, my web server access log will continue showing Mozilla user base growth of less than 1%/month/year.

That is where GBrowser comes into play. Google has a massive distribution channel that knows no OS boundaries.

Re:The missing link: Distribution Channel

[crayz]

Microsoft is already targetting Google for death. If I could run Google for a day, the first thing I'd do is put a little link at the top of every page saying "Google recommends Firefox" and sending people to Mozilla.org

Re:The missing link: Distribution Channel

[Anonymous Coward]

"Until somebody with a big distribution channel jumps in and helps Mozilla" like an AOL kinda company maybe

Re:The missing link: Distribution Channel

[otisg]

Yes, except they never did anything with Mozilla. I never understood what they were smoking. Now that I see they are even releasing an IE-based browser I know for sure I don't want any of that thing they are smoking. Baaaad.

One Fight that Micro$oft Cannot Win

[reporter]

One fight that Micro$oft cannot win is the fight between open source and Micro$oft -- if a stable company backs any piece of open source software. In the particular case, we need a company like IBM to back FireFox in order to persuade commercial customers to use it. Commercial customers absolutely need to know that, if a flaw in FireFox is not addressed promptly and correctly by volunteer programmers, then IBM wil step into the picture and fix the problem immediately.

The reason that Micro$oft cannot win in this kind of fight is that there is no company paying the salaries of the programmers developing FireFox. It is a volunteer effort.

In the case of the Netscape browser, Netscape was a commerical company and essentially cut its own jugular in funding Netscape development and support and giving it away for free, but where could Netscape get its money to grow? It tried branching into commercial Web servers, but there were too many competitors in that market. Netscape was headed for bankruptcy.

In the case of FireFox, there is no company for Micro$oft to crush. Round 1 and the game goes to FireFox and the open-source movement. <applause>

Re:One Fight that Micro$oft Cannot Win

[DrSkwid]

don't you mean Net$cape ?

Re:One Fight that Micro$oft Cannot Win

[Morpeth]

"The reason that Micro$oft cannot win in this kind of fight is that there is no company paying the salaries of the programmers developing FireFox. It is a volunteer effort."

The is exactly the reason MS is NOT dead. I don't know about you, but I prefer not to work for free, most people don't.

You're assuming Firefox developers will always want to, or be willing to, work for free. That doesn't pay the bills. At some point, people and companies need to make money - though it's terrific people are willing to donate time to something like this, and we need alternatives to IE - I don't think it's the uber-torpedo that will sink MS/IE, no matter how much you dislike them.

"Round 1 and the game goes to FireFox and the open-source movement"

Game goes to Firefox? Huh? I'm sorry, but what world do you live in? Again, put aside your hate of MS and look at it objectively from a pure business perspective, as much as I'm pulling for Opera/FireFox/et al, it's a silly claim.

Re:One Fight that Micro$oft Cannot Win

[Dionysus]

Is 90% of the Mozilla/Gecko code written by Netscape, lather AOL employees. And coders are currently payed by the Mozilla foundation?

Re:One Fight that Micro$oft Cannot Win

[Picard102]

The "game" is anything but over.

Simple explanation

[gilesjuk]

Microsoft is waiting for the competition to come up with all the new ideas and take the lead. Microsoft will then implement these ideas in IE with their own take on the idea.

Microsoft will then hype up these new developments as if they were their ideas and go on about how their right to innovate is important.

Re:Simple explanation

[spectecjr]

Microsoft is waiting for the competition to come up with all the new ideas and take the lead. Microsoft will then implement these ideas in IE with their own take on the idea.

Microsoft will then hype up these new developments as if they were their ideas and go on about how their right to innovate is important

You mean the way that Firefox did exactly that with the security bar in the version of IE released in XP SP2?

Please. Less hubris, more work. Thanks.

Re:Simple explanation

[MtViewGuy]

All Microsoft needs to do to squash Firefox is to buy out the people who developed the Maxthon plugin for IE and offer it for IE 5.5 and later users through Windows Update. That right there will pretty much dry up much of the market for Firefox.

Also: Microsoft are not extending IE for Mac

[tod_miller]

news.com.com.com.com.com

I think Microsoft still want to keep people on IE, but they are unable to concentrate thier efforts, and with the hullabaloo they are working behind the scenes to 'extract' the browser.

IE has kinda been tapered into a usable yet dangerous browser - firefox is fairly good (I have a wish list and potential bug list too long for me to sift through bugzilla reports)

Opera is good, does its job.

What is next for the humble browser? Integration? Better / faster rendering? I think not.

Perhaps being able to do a simple task better.

I personally would preffer my email and web in one box, so thunderbird developers write a neat plugin for firefox that combines them quickly and seamlessly.

And the sunbird calendar is good. Again, I want them in one side bar, F7 for mail and F8 for calendar, Fsomethingelse bookmarks, Fagain for RSS links.

And remove the download window :-/ unless it gets as good as a real d/l manager, it is more of a hassle!

I like the autodownload features, I can rip down pdf files from a list without fsssskking Adowbee Acrowbaht Readuh trying to happily rape my ram.

Re:Also: Microsoft are not extending IE for Mac

[xsupergr0verx]

Again, I want them in one side bar, F7 for mail and F8 for calendar, Fsomethingelse bookmarks, Fagain for RSS links.

Mozdev to tod_miller:

F-U

Three more (more accurate) words...

[WIAKywbfatw]

Yes it is.

There's a Google ads-supported free version of Opera and a paid for ad-free version. Either way, you've got a damn good browser, arguably the best one around.

A great deal of the features that FireFox users rave about came from Opera, and every version brings even more innovation. It's even smaller and faster than FireFox too (IIRC.)

And, before someone starts saying that its UI takes up too much screen space, let me just say that the default interface in the latest version is tiny (and, of course, Opera can be skinned and customised to your taste). While I'm on the subject of dispelling myths and inaccuracies, Opera renders virtually every web page out there as well as MSIE or FireFox: there were problems with some JavaScript-heavy pages in the past, but that's been fixed for a long time too.

About the only website that the current version Opera has a problem with is Gmail, because of all its weird code, and even then there are simple workarounds for that. The issue is fixed in the latest beta, which means that even that problem is only temporary.

So, to recap, Opera is a smaller, faster, more feature-packed browser that's on the cutting edge. And there's a free version and a paid-for version. What more did you want from a commercially-developed application?

Re:Three more (more accurate) words...

[ExKoopaTroopa]

A great deal of the features that FireFox users rave about came from Opera, and every version brings even more innovation. It's even smaller and faster than FireFox too (IIRC.) agreed, but with Firefox extension model, you don't have to have them all, although with Opera you don't have to hunt down / install/ update as much

Re:Three more (more accurate) words...

[ydnar]

It may be gratis, but it's not libre.

Re:Three more (more accurate) words...

[undoer]

A great deal of the features that FireFox users rave about came from Opera, and every version brings even more innovation. It's even smaller and faster than FireFox too (IIRC.) I completely agree with you.. Opera was the first browser I would have even considered the thought of putting some hard-earned money into, but was too lazy to go about the process.. I'm stuck with the free version of ads. The ads grow on you and you don't realize that they're there anymore. Hell, you can do fullscreen and you'll be happy enough as it is

Re:Three more (more accurate) words...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a Google ads-supported free version of Opera and a paid for ad-free version. Either way, you've got a damn good browser

I wouldn't call something with an annoying, distracting animation in the corner of my eye all the time to be a damn good browser.

(And I have a legitimate license for Opera).

About the only website that the current version Opera has a problem with is Gmail, because of all its weird code, and even then there are simple workarounds for that.

It was my understanding that it was because Opera lacked the XMLHTTPRequest object, which isn't "weird" and can't be worked around.

So, to recap, Opera is a smaller, faster, more feature-packed browser that's on the cutting edge.

Smaller and faster? Not in my experience. More feature-packed? You haven't actually listed any features it has that its competitors do not. You've focussed on trying to rebut criticisms against it instead of talking about what it can actually do that other browsers can't.

Re:Three more (more accurate) words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Proper CSS1 and CSS2 support?

Re:Three more (more accurate) words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither is IE, but it is part of the "war."

Re:Three more (more accurate) words...

[JawFunk]

About the only website that the current version Opera has a problem with is Gmail, because of all its weird code, and even then there are simple workarounds for that.

Sparking the curiosity of an independent web designer and gmail user, what kind of problems were there? Reply is much appreciated.

Re:Three more (more accurate) words...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Soviet Union "lost" the cold war, but it (Russia) is still huge, and still around. Okay, crappy analogy...

Re:Three more (more accurate) words...

[Jugalator]

I agree with everything you say, but...

What more did you want from a commercially-developed application?

Extensibility and not "everything" in the core app. This is a big downside with Opera in my opinion. I don't want a browser where the devs adds all features they can think of since they don't have an Extension (not to be confused with plugins) system in place.

Just look at the Mozilla browsers to see how successful extensions have been. There are millions of innovative concepts that can be found there, that is far from having been implemented in that ad-supported closed source browser.

I do understand if people like Opera more (Firefox is far slower merely at going back/forward in page histories for example), but there are extensions that have really grown on to me.

Re:Three more (more accurate) words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Opera is fast in rendering pages from it's cache.
Damn annoying on some dynamic sites where it just loads stuff from the cache and not the newly generated page.
Other browsers of course have a cache, but they seem to be working as it's supposed to work.

Re:Three more (more accurate) words...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a good analogy--Russia is, after all, on the UN Security Council & still has more power than many other more productive countries.

My point wat that the first post asked why Opera wasn't considered to be a fighter in the war & the reason can't be "because it ain't F/OSS" if you include IE.

Opera does have more marketshare than Safari.

Re:Three more (more accurate) words...

[eugene ts wong]

Smaller and faster? Not in my experience. More feature-packed? You haven't actually listed any features it has that its competitors do not.

The connections settings and the browser cache make a big difference. Also, how it is configured to render images make a difference. I can't underscore the speed difference enough. When I go back to IE, I'm surprised @ how a newer computer with IE can go slower than my Pentium Classic with KDE fully loaded. When I say, "newer", I mean newer than a Pentium Classic, not newer than most models out there.

A feature that I like is user style sheets that you can select in a menu. It's not user friendly to install them, but once you do install them, then you can do all sorts of neat things, like removing columns and rows on the fly. I even use user style sheets to customize my browsing of slashdot, which makes it all much more speedier.

As for those ads, you should switch to text ads. They don't flash. There are no animations.

I've already paid for Opera. I still have the ads enabled. I'll pay for it again if I have to.

Re:Three more (more accurate) words...

[aldoman]

Oh dear, not the old 'Opera's JS support is good - honest!' crap.

I'll give you one guess on why "About the only website that the current version Opera has a problem with is Gmail, because of all its weird code, and even then there are simple workarounds for that. The issue is fixed in the latest beta, which means that even that problem is only temporary."

doesn't work in Opera (and IE5 and below), but works in everything else... no ideas? Guess what - it's Opera's JS (or more specifically, DOM Level 2) support. Opera's DOM support is worse than IE for gods sake!

And no, the problem is not fixed in the new beta. They implemented a bunch more stuff very quickly, but still the spellchecker and other small, but important, features don't work.

Opera's UI is horrible, frankly. It's just too damn bloated. Too much stuff in it. I don't care if the download is small, the reason is because it uses UPX encoding which sacrifices memory usage for disk space - Firefox could get itself down to 3MB or so if it used it, but they think that considering nearly 60% of the US (and a good 40-50% of Europe; even more in most of Asia) are on Broadband, that using more RAM to save a couple of seconds download time is a bit stupid.

Re:Three more (more accurate) words...

[cryptochrome]

Ad-supported does not equal free in my book. It costs my time and attention, and my monitor is cluttered enough as is. That goes for Eudora as well.

For the record, I use Safari, which boots and runs faster than Firefox in my experience and looks better, although on occasion does not render correctly. My only major wish is for mime-type behavior control. Of course, it's mac-only.

I tried Opera once and while I don't recall the details, I remember not being impressed with performance or stability. I just downloaded again to check it out. My initial impressions:
1) That banner is freaking enormous.
2) It does seem to be fast and rendering correctly, although not much faster.
3) The panel on the left is ugly and takes up too much space

So a casual inspection gives me no compelling reason to switch, and a couple rather obvioius reasons not to.

Re:Three more (more accurate) words...

[Anonymous Coward]

In IE one can automate Msxml2.XMLHTTP in scripts to GET/POST arbitrary data from the server. In Mozilla, it's XmlHttpRequest. Opera has neither, hence why Gmail does not work in Opera (since it depends on the functionality provided by them).

Re:Three more (more accurate) words...

[hkmwbz]

"Guess what - it's Opera's JS (or more specifically, DOM Level 2) support. Opera's DOM support is worse than IE for gods sake!"

Opera's DOM support is perfectly fine. The thing that doesn't work in Gmail isn't even part of a standard. It's a non-standard Gecko extension, XMLHttpRequest. I think you should probably inform yourself before repeating tired old memes that aren't correct anyway.

As for the UI, it's fine. It has lots of functionality, but doesn't take up much space, and it's easy to use.

Your post is a typical example of an uninformed Firefox fanboy who bashes Opera without good reasons.

Re:Three more (more accurate) words...

[hkmwbz]

Who cares? Seriously, I want the tool best suited for the job. Open-source is nice and all that, but if a commercial piece of software works better for me, I'll use it. Lots of people do use Opera, you know... They even pay for it :)

Re:Three more (more accurate) words...

[xslf]

"more feature-packed browser that's on the cutting edge".
Yeah, cutting egde. Being the LAST browser to implement bidi support, and even now they don't get it close to right on anything but the Widnows version (I am talking about 7.53 version on both Linux and MacOSX).
http://nontroppo.org/wiki/OperaAndBiDiLanguages

Sorry, but I refuse to use a browser that displays any Hebrew/Arabic text that appears in a form widget- be it a drop down menu or the text I write in a text area- reversed, making it impossible for me to read what I am writing (and guess what are the options presented to me in the drop down menus).

Not to mention the email client and the IRC client which suffer from the same problem which makes it unusable.

It is ironic, that a non-US browser is so weak when it comes to i18n features. It is sad that Opera is the one that came out with a press release about how great they are for Hebrew-
http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2002/06/2002 0620.dml THat was over two years ago, and they still don't get it right.

I used to like Opera very much, back in Opera 4 days. But after many years, many versions, many bug reports submitted and many unfullfiled promises, I just moved on to FOSS browsers.

At least there, I can search bugzilla and see what is going on with my bug reports, and not be forced to download the next version in the hope that maybe maybe they fixed it now.

Re:Three more (more accurate) words...

[Taladar]

3) The panel on the left is ugly and takes up too much space

In all the years (since some 5.x version) I used Opera I had this Panel open for about 20 minutes if you add the time from all occassions I needed it. The only real reason to open it is sorting of Bookmarks which does not happen that often considering you can place your bookmark anyplace you want inside your bookmarks folder with Opera.

Re:Three more (more accurate) words...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://developer.apple.com/internet/webcontent/xml httpreq.html

XMLHttpRequest was invented by MS, and is now handled properly by every major browser except Opera.

Re:Three more (more accurate) words...

[hkmwbz]

Wow, an AC who's a bit slow!

Opera 7.60 supports the non-standard XMLHttpRequest.

Now go and hide under your rock, where you belong.

Don't worry, MS

[koi88]

Honestly, I think MS has little to fear of Mozilla & Co.
Don't mod me Troll, I love Firefox, Safari and Opera and use them almost exclusively. Yet when I try to convince my Windows-using friends the reaction is usually "But the included browser (if they know this expression) works fine. I'm used to it."
It's incredibly difficult to compete with a program that comes installed with the OS.
I think the population of really internet-savy people, people who care about their browser, is no more than 5-10%. These people can be won. The vast majority will stay with IE.

Re:Don't worry, MS

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats were /.ers come in. Show, install and get your friends, parents, family off IE. My folks are happy opera/firefox users depending on who's at the con.

Re:Don't worry, MS

[marq00z]

"It's incredibly difficult to compete with a program that comes installed with the OS." - so, you'd rather use Microsoft(R) Paintbrush[TM] than Photoshop or The GIMP? ;-)

Re:Don't worry, MS

[I confirm I'm not a]

"But the included browser (if they know this expression) works fine. I'm used to it."

Aye, I get this argument too (and also from people I'd expect to know better ;) but I just don't get it:
wordpad comes bundled with Windows; yet the first thing most people do is install Word. I think that that needs to be our argument: "IE is a capable-enough browser, a bit like wordpad or the Windows firewall, but a power-use like you would probably want to upgrade to a proper browser"... or something similar.

Also, don't underestimate the power of themes and extensions! Most of the interest I get in my "strange" browser is from it (a) looking different fairly frequently (usually when a new Firefox is released and my usual theme breaks :( ) or from (b) me using an extension to do something faster than my colleagues.

It's a slow process, but I feel I'm winning people over bit by bit...

Re:Don't worry, MS

[OreoCookie]

I think that that needs to be our argument: "IE is a capable-enough browser, a bit like wordpad or the Windows firewall, but a power-use like you would probably want to upgrade to a proper browser"... or something similar.

Until they go to one of many major websites that do not render properly in Mozilla. Then they don't trust your advice anymore. I use Firefox and I hid the IE icon on my wife's computer, but that doesn't change the facts. I told my wife that I'd rather a few sites look screwy than she get spyware or trojans installed through Internet Explorer and she agrees. Most people would go back to using IE though.

Re:Don't worry, MS

[Riktov]

wordpad comes bundled with Windows; yet the first thing most people do is install Word.

Most people already have Word installed on their newly-bought computer, and most people thus think that Microsoft Office is a part of Windows, and Windows is a part of the PC, and thus it's all free.

You can tell people Firefox is free, but it doesn't mean much to someone who thinks that anything from Microsoft that's already on their computer is also free.

Re:Don't worry, MS

[Tom]

but a power-use like you would probably want to upgrade to a proper browser

Bingo.
My online game (see below) has moved from 65% IE users to 40% IE users (Firefox took the lead early this month) because that's the formulation I use in the "sorry" page for the one part of the site that doesn't work in IE because IE's implementation of CSS is broken, so I catch IE users and show them a page explaining why it's broken and that they should upgrade to a better browser.

It's also how I sell Firefox to my friends. IE is just the default browser that comes with the OS. There are several real browsers you can install later, and you should. I recommend Firefox, but you can use Mozilla, Opera or any other you like.

Not Opera-specific?

[WIAKywbfatw]

Just who do you think came up with mouse gestures? Opera did, that's who. Everyone else's mouse gestures are "me too" additions.

Re:Not Opera-specific?

[aed]

Just who do you think came up with mouse gestures?

Not Opera, that's for sure :-)

I remember using software which gave me mouse gestures in Windows about 9 years ago, not too long after the first release of Windows 95.

According to their site, Opera released their first Windows browser (version 2.1) in 1996.

Re:Not Opera-specific?

[Ilgaz]

Also where is a mozilla browser can run on a 7650 Nokia which has 4 mb reported ram but has 3.2 mb?

Come on mozilla fanatics, tell me its outdated phone and I tell you I PAID for Opera.

I also paid for sdoubler from psiloc that zips the unused programs so I can have Realone and others too.

Oh shoot me btw...

Re:Not Opera-specific?

[Anonymous Coward]

No one's arguing that... I believe he was arguing that they're just not Opera specific (anymore). Mozilla and Firefox have extentions for gestures as well.

I'm not sure what the first application that had any mouse gestures was, first place I saw it was B&W (and they sucked), but Opera probably had them before tho, not sure if anything had it before Opera, I wouldn't do it tho.

I used them for awhile with mozilla and found it pointless. The only ones I ever really used as back and reload, which I found it easier and to just click on the damn buttons--and newer mice have those buttons now anyway...

-- gid

Re:Not Opera-specific?

[WarMonkey]

Can't we all just get along?

Re:Not Opera-specific?

[BlackHawk-666]

Did Opera get them before or after the game Black & White, which also used gestures to do stuff. Bottom line, there's very little innovation in the world, and even stuff that looks innovative may simply have cribbed from a source you're not currently aware of. I tried Opera for about five minutes, then dumped it in favour of Firefox. It wasn't that anything was wrong with it, but there was no compelling features that made me think "I must use this browser, now".

Re:Not Opera-specific?

[Ilgaz]

no?

I don't like best ones in coding to be bitched like that.

Damn thing works on 7650? I mean a phone with "4mb ram" which Nokia lied about? Yes!

So, Opera rocks, amateur mozilla coder sux!

(did to get -1 btw) ;)

Re:Not Opera-specific?

[aldoman]

I'll agree with you. Mozilla is a bit on the heavy side for phone/PDA use. However, I just don't see why people expect that a _desktop_ browser should work on a Nokia Phone. I think a separate (or heavily cut down) rendering engine is a better idea, specialized exactly for small screens.

Re:Not Opera-specific?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just mouse gestures:

* Popup blocking.
* Tabs.
* Skins.
* Built-in search bar.

And much more. These were all started in Opera. I'll also say Opera is the leanest, fastest browser out there.

Re:Not Opera-specific?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe opera had them before black and white. And Discreet's 3D Studio Max had them before Opera and Alias|Wavefront's Maya hade them beforw Max. Gestures have been around for a long time.

Re:Not Opera-specific?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Did Opera get them before or after the game Black & White, which also used gestures to do stuff.

Emacs had gestures before Black and White. Yes, emacs. Gestures have been around as long as tablets, and only recently have jumped to mice.

Re:Not Opera-specific?

[Thundersnatch]

Gestures with the puck or stylus were part of the functionality of Autocad as far back as the late eighties, as I recall.

Re:Not Opera-specific?

[hkmwbz]

"However, I just don't see why people expect that a _desktop_ browser should work on a Nokia Phone. I think a separate (or heavily cut down) rendering engine is a better idea, specialized exactly for small screens."

That's the beauty of Opera. You use the exact same engine on both PC and mobile. That's why it's so fast and smooth on PC too, I guess.

browser wars

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think there will be a browser war. Two things make me think this. The first is Microsoft has their browser as part of the OS. Most people are not interested in looking for something else, when there is something handy which mostly works.

The second reason is the browsers I have seen are starting to look and feel like IE. This is making people like me who want something different stay with older versions like Netscape 7.0 or Mozilla.

I care nothing for your browser wars.

[venomkid]

For I design my sites to standards.

(Sure, I kludge it a little to make it look 100% in all the major browsers, but it still validates w3c.)

Re:I care nothing for your browser wars.

[shish]

I design my sites to standards.

So do I, which is exactly my reason for hating IE - I'll spend an hour on the layout, w3c standard, and it looks fine in FF, safari and opera. I then spend the next 6 hours making it look right in IE, sometimes requiring that I start again from scratch...

Browsers for specific purposes:

[miscellaneous_havoc]

I have a purpose for just about every browser out there:

Firefox - Everyday browsing (Duh!)
IE - College webmail reading (ActiveX)
Netscape - When I feel like being punished
Opera - Searching for pr0n! (Those one-handed guestures. ;)

Just seems to me you can appreciate them all!
Make Love not [Browser] War.

Re:Browsers for specific purposes:

[ExKoopaTroopa]

Opera - Searching for pr0n! (Those one-handed guestures. ;) Try Firefox optimoz mouse gesture extension, one handed browsing in your favorite browser

Re:Browsers for specific purposes:

[I confirm I'm not a]

(Those one-handed guestures. ;)

Dude, not only can you get a mouse-gesture extension for Firefox, but (I've been told - by a friend - honest) you can also get an extension that will download all images linked to from a page into one directory. You might <ahem> find that useful?

Re:Browsers for specific purposes:

[FooAtWFU]

IE - College webmail reading (ActiveX)

Dude- Tell us which college you go to, so we can avoid it at all costs. :)

Re:Browsers for specific purposes:

[Jugalator]

Hehe...

Look no further: Clicky! :-)

Re:Browsers for specific purposes:

[emurphy42]

> IE - College webmail reading (ActiveX) Have you tried it with Firefox? My work account has Exchange web access and Firefox handles it okay, though it's slightly more awkward than IE. Heck, get yourself a Gmail account and use that. (*goes to look up the pool-Gmail-invites project at spreadfirefox.com* Dammit, why's the whole site down? They wouldn't be so short-sighted as to get rid of it just because the initial push of 1.0PR is past...)

Re:Browsers for specific purposes:

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing Opera doea beter than FF. On many site when you use the forward gesture and there isn't a link in the history table, Opera will use the next link. Sometimes it goofs and can't find the correct link but on many sites (Voyuerweb.com UMMMM!!!) this works great. THXS for the 1 click extension hint :p

Re:Browsers for specific purposes:

[infinite9]

Opera - Searching for pr0n! (Those one-handed guestures. ;)

I tried that but it didn't work! The browser keeps thinking I'm clicking forward-back-forward-back over and over. Anyone know why?

Wouldn't it be nice...

[mjanosko]

if Microsofts ideas of "aggressive tactics" just ONCE included making a better product?

Re:Wouldn't it be nice...

[Anonymous Coward]

They did back when they made IE 5.0
It loaded pages and ran faster than Netscape 4.7.

Re:Wouldn't it be nice...

[mjanosko]

Ok, so, what does that have to do with now? Instead of whatever underhanded business techniques they are working on deep under the earths crust, why dont they just make IE better (again)?

Slashbot alert!

[Anonymous Coward]

"competition could compel the company [Microsoft] to use aggressive tactics to protect its Windows operating system monopoly"

The fact that most of you reading this are using Mac OSX, *nix, etc. demonstrates that MS does not have an operating system monopoly. duh.

Re:Slashbot alert!

[teamhasnoi]

It's been shown that most /.ers read /. with IE on Windows (presumably at work).

Even though I *am* here on OS X, methinks you don't know what 'monopoly' means. It doesn't mean that there aren't any other choices, it means that MS leverages their market share in their OS to stifle competition in other areas.

Go back a few years, and read about the original browser war. That is a good example. Or see what MS did to BeOS's OEM program.

Re:Slashbot alert!

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps not in the strictest since (100% of the market), but 94% of the desktop market (higher if your criteria is the desktop market on x86 chips) is still insane. Combine that with attempting lock-ins & practicing anti-competitive behavior, and you might as well call it what it is. The Justice Department has, as have the courts in other countries.

Re:Slashbot alert!

[Anonymous Coward]

Methinks you're confusing 'Monopoly' and 'Market Dominance'. Monopoly, by definition, DOES mean there aren't any other choices.

gonna get modded down, but...

[patrick.whitlock]

i have to say it... im so sick and tired of hearing people whine about microsoft and all the evils there in. microsoft may be a monopoly, but it got that way because of the fact that more people like using windows rather than anything else, its easier for them and they are more comfortable with it. now for the current topic of browsers....if you don't like IE, don't use it...i don't, with the exception of getting windows updates with it....yes, i update my OS. people DO have the choice to not use anything microsoft, they just choose not to use the alternative, if they don't know about the other options, go give them some of your free software, and tell them to have a nice day. microsoft isn't going anywhere anytime soon, you can't complain them into defeat, nor can you bankrupt them at this poing, bill has more money than god, and he wants more....ok, not my way, but it works for him. but for the love of god....stop bitching about something you can do nothing about, either educate the public on your views and thier options, or shut the f*ck up. troll modding insues

Come on people, itse easy

[Prince Vegeta SSJ4]

to pick the winner. Just look at thier pictures.

Who do you think would win in a fight between THIS guy, and THIS guy. It's no contest.

Re:Come on people, itse easy

[Peyna]

I imagine that Mozilla would do the same thing that anyone else would do if they saw that guy in a butterfly costume. Run!

Re:Come on people, itse easy

[OreoCookie]

I don't know. Dinosaurs are extinct but I see butterflies all the time.

Yaawwnn...

[zaqattack911]

Wow "Netscape founder Marc Andreessen" is a fucking genius.

Thanks, I really didn't know Firefox and IE are competitors.

Allow me to take it all in..... yep this is really front page news.

Oh, and this breaking news just in... .NET is a competitor of Sun's Java.

return of the jedi (firefox)

[Anonymous Coward]

I felt a great disturbance in The Force... Maybe not millions of downloads, then silenced, but a disturbance nonetheless.

Couple of differences

[SmallFurryCreature]

First there has been a huge influx of new net users and can I say that most of them have next to no knowledge about computers and related subjects? To me it seems like there are more clueless users around then during the last "war". Since these users all use IE by default MS has a huge advantage. When you got your ISP subscription you had to download your browser before and many suggested netscape.

Granted mozilla/firefox has slowly been winning and the time that ISP's would only know about IE seems to be gone but the manuals still talk about IE as far as I have seen.

So before there was a war between the leader Netscape and the "we come default" newbie IE. Now it would be between the Default AND leader IE and the newbie Mozilla. Not exactly the same thing eh?

More people without a clue and a different power balance. I wish Mozilla/firefox all the lucm in the world but I been hearing to long that MS is going to lose or even have a fight.

This post done on Linux/Opera, the choice of real small furry creatures from alpha centauri.

What war?

[Anonymous Coward]

I only saw Netscape get hijacked by a "free" browser that was preinstalled on every PC the OEM's pushed out their door. After a hijacking approved by the Bush's DOJ after the successful conviction by the previous administration's DOJ, the convicted but unpunished monopolist is now remembering that it is difficult to compete against free.

This is especially true today because large numbers of Microsofties are abandoning Microsoft's browser in favor of one of the free browsers: FireFox, Netscape or Opera, because they are more secure, faster, and more up todate. Also fueling the desire for change is that fact that too many of the Microsofties have had to reinstall Windows their 'fully patched' boxes, and re-patch them, more than once.

One can't call this a browser war, but merely a huge flow of refugees from a war torn computing zone. The real war is Microsoft vs the script-kiddies, and Microsoft, like the record and movie companies, is leaving no civil right untouched in its battle to achive total control over what you can do with your PC.

Re:Huh? Will longhorn become...

[davidsyes]

SHORThorn or longTHORN?

SHORT because they'll likely have to strip out features and modularize windoze like they LIED back around 1994 (when there was demand for them to remove non-task-specific features to lighten the footprint on resources...). They have YET to strip windoze down to be JUST a print server, JUST a file server, JUST a web server, JUST a desktop client, JUST a...

longTHORN.. because instead of being GORED by their own monopolist practices, they're going to suffer the THORN being their own petard.

Corporate -vs- Home User Perspective

[gregarican]

As for home users I can see some of the more savvy ones get fed up with MSIE and adopt an alternative. Those less savvy home users will just tough it out and get jammed with tons of exploits and spyware.

Corporate users a lot of times are stuck into software policies and standards. Just jumping ship isn't as easy. Look at the Office -vs- OpenOffice debate that sparks up across so many workplaces. As an example of MSIE quagmire my company has to use certain third party vendor websites for transaction processing and these sites foolishly require MSIE in order to properly function. So either I splinter our software standardization by having both MSIE and a non-MSIE alternative or else I patch and lock down MSIE as best as I can. Unfortunately I am forced to do the latter.

I know many of y'all will say, "Demand that the vendor open up their web development standards" or "Just get a different vendor" but often the real world isn't as cut and dried.

The Browser Wars ARE back

[RangerRick98]

Yes, they are, because merely by posting this story, we've got a war raging in the comments right here on /.

Microsoft is trapped

[elementus]

Microsoft's Internet Explorer will never be as secure as FireFox is. To start off with, FireFox is open source and often updated. People can find any glitches in the coding.

Internet Explorer is included with Windows. Therefore it will still be the popular choice with the less technically inclined. Therefore, more people will code their virii and other such malicious programs to target holes in the security of Internet Explorer.

Basically, Microsoft will never be able to recover and make a browser as safe as FireFox in my opinion.

The only saving grace is IE's crapyness.

[asoap]

The only saving grace is all of the horrible faults in IE.

Using your example:
Person A buys a new computer, and uses the IE browser because they could care less what they use.

Person A then gets a crap load of spyware on there computer, and then bugs that one geek that they know to fix there computer. Then the geek says.... I don't need to fix your computer, just download and install Firefox. Don't use that IE piece of crap.

Boom, there we go, problem fixed. This is exactly how I've gotten firefox on people's computers. I haven't heard of one story of a lamen user who has been tired of IE, so they searched out a better brower, and picked up firefox or opera.

It's always been because there geek friend telling them to use it. Geeks are what are powering this new browser war. If Microsoft fixes there brower, we are in trouble.

-Derek

Re:The only saving grace is IE's crapyness.

[dekemoose]

Your right, I've installed FireFox on a number of my friends computers for them and recommended it to a number of other people. However, there are a whole lot of people that don't have a geek to talk to. The geeks can get a few points for Firefox, but not a real threat. The real threat will need to come from a corporate standpoint, i.e. AOL starts to use Firefox as their browser or Dell starts to bundle it with their systems.

Re:The only saving grace is IE's crapyness.

[n54]

Yup but don't forget that as soon as a person has fallen in love with Firefox, or Mozilla, or Opera, they have themselves become mini-geeks and are usually proud to display their "know-how" to all who are still using Internet Error :)

I don't think IE will be the largest in one or two years if they continue to have the recent level of troubles, "normal" people are getting sick of it.

It is different now

[shikan_taza]

Microsoft cut off Netscape's air supply to prevent Navigator from making the OS irrelevant (by hosting the JVM). I don't think there is any such danger from Safari or Firefox.

Just my two cents.

Re:"Self"-defense. No, it doesn't involve guns...

[davidsyes]

...but it DOES involve LANDMINES. I have a feeling that ms' landmines are their dollars, and they'll place them anywhere any time to cause damage to the F/LOSS credibility.

Hopefully, though, ms will backstep their assess over a few of their own mines. Might not blow a leg off, but maybe enough pocks and rips could infect the hell out of them... And, hopefully the shock and concussion will deafen them just long enough they'll be gored by their own longTHORN in their SHORThorn.

David Syes

and about time, too!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just received another PC to fix last night. Wouldn't even fire up (constant hourglass cursor). I brought it up in safe mode, went to msconfig and identified at least 15 pieces of spyware, including:
1. my absolute fave, Hotbar, which has a backdoor that allows installing other software automagically. Script kiddies have learned to use this to install their own!
2. Weather bar - billed as weather updates, it also pops up ads whenever it is running. Some of those ads I have observed installing spyware.
3. 2 or 3 HBOs that I know from experience are spyware laden POS.

All of these are IE specific!

I will not attempt to clean this system! I quoted a complete wipe and re-install. I've had enough experince with these to know that the cost to clean it will very soon exceed the cost of a new system.

I also recommeneded Mozilla; it has protected every other user that I pointed to it as long as they used it and not IE. It is just about damned time that IE was buried!

Stability

[Andy Dodd]

On one of my old systems, Opera happened to be the only browser light/fast enough to run reasonably on that system.

My main dislike of it? It was unstable as hell. :( It crashed frequently, even more often than IE on my Windows boxes.

At that time, Mozilla was massively bloated. From what I've heard, and experienced, Firefox is much closer to Opera in terms of size and speed than the Mozilla of old, and it's *damn stable*.

Re:Stability

[eugene ts wong]

In other news, vim is smaller and faster than KDE. Just kidding; no insult intended.

Seriously, Firefox has no email, if I understand correctly, which makes it kind of hard to use as a full featured system. On top of that, Firefox for Linux is much bigger than Firefox for Windows, at least when I last checked.

From what I understand Opera is smaller and faster than Firefox, and has more features, even if you recompile Firefox.

Re:Stability

[haberb]

I find that firefox is way more unstable on pages with many images. I mean like 100 or more large images. It always seems to crash. It may be the version I was using at the time, but try going to http://fusker.com/ or similar and give it a shot. Opera doesn't crash on these pages, plus, even if it does, it usually remembers where I was last. That's a feature I'd like to see on firefox. Any linkage?

Re:Stability

[hatrisc]

Firefox on linux is bigger really only because it staticly links gtk2 and font support so that it can look the same on all of the distributions. If you compile it yourself (i.e. you like to do that) then it's still small and relies on the shared library versions of gtk2 and font stuff and therefore you get the same size stuff. If that made any sense let me know.

Re:Stability

[Anonymous Coward]

There's Thunderbird for that.

There's no reason to FORCE webmail users to have an IMAP or POP3 client. In fact, it's pretty asenine and self-centered. And force them you do, when it's integrated with the browser.

Re:Stability

[mrchaotica]

Did you try Dillo?

Re:Stability

[Jaycatt]

it usually remembers where I was last

That's my favorite feature, too. Even if it crashes with 5 tabs in use, it brings back each one. No struggling to figure out which search terms you used and which pages you had opened, if you get a crash partway into researching something. Of course, other browsers might do that too, I haven't done a whole lot of searching since I'm satisfied with Opera.

Re:Stability

[AaronGTurner]

I find on my home systems (Win XP or Suse 9.1) opera 7 is more stable than Firefox. At work (different hardware set - always a good test) Opera is not installed so I can't compare or be sure it isn't just my machine in some strange way not playing nicely with Firefox.

Re:Stability

[fozzy1015]

Try K-meleon Based on mozilla but a more light weight interface.

Re:Stability

[eugene ts wong]

True, but we weren't talking about such freedoms. We were talking about file sizes and features. If we wanted to talk about choice, then yes, Mozilla and friends would be better. I'm sure that if Opera disabled the code, then we could argue that Opera is smaller, according to my presuppositions. I'm probably going to have to change my presuppositions, though, based on what another person said about static binaries.

Bear in mind that as far as user friendliness goes, Opera easily lets you choose another email client. Therefore nobody is forced to do anything. It just as easy to configure Opera as it is to install a new email client.

In short, I'm comparing features per kilobyte of disk space. That's not a great measure, but that's what I meant.

Re:Stability

[eugene ts wong]

Actually, that made a lot of sense. I still don't understand why it takes up more space on Linux than it does on Windows. Don't get wrong, I'll take your word for it, since it makes a lot of sense.

Non IE browsers for internet apps?

[Kenja]

Anyone know if there is a non IE browser that supports ActiveX well enough to run Microsofts OWC objects? At work our product makes heavy use of OWC and thus I've been unable to get people to stop using IE.

Even my *mom* uses Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

and I didn't even have to suggest it to her.
Microsoft is definitely losing.

Well maybe this time..

[Anonymous Coward]

...they wont use cop outs as an excuse to notimprove their browser and end up folding.

OT: Sig

[Anonymous Coward]

No offense to you intended, but can we please start naming products that do "messaging" something other than Mercury?

Re:*sigh* "Best Viewed"?

[RangerRick98]

Your website should be developed to display properly on any standards-compliant browser

And hence why it's best viewed in Firefox. I do a bit of web development for work and as a hobby, and IE is one of the most standards-broken browsers I've ever dealt with. Granted, 6.0 improved that quite a bit from 5.5 (which unfortunately I still have to deal with at work), but it's still far from being where Firefox is. I agree with you, though, that websites shouldn't make requirements of the end-user. Code your website standards-compliant, and if they show up with a non-compliant browser, that might do something to show them what's wrong with what they're using.

See it through...

[clinko]

These companies want to make money.

So how does it work? People don't change their homepage, they go to *MSN/NETSCAPE/ETC*'s website to show banners, and they make money.

If you really want to screw a browser company over, download their browser, then set the homepage as your favorite browser's homepage.

Or just download their browser for the hell of it, don't use it. Atleast it'll cost them bandwidth.

Standards compliance (or lack of)

[prandal]

A few months back I designed a simple web site using CSS and XHTML. It was a no-brainer (for I have no brain when it comes to HTML). Internet Explorer failed to render it correctly (ignoring "position:fixed", not showing background colours correctly). Opera was better but it didn't size one of my backgrounds correctly. Mozilla and Firefox did exactly as I expected.

Welcome to the digital future

[Ifni]

Andreessen warned that 'competition could compel the company [Microsoft] to use aggressive tactics to protect its Windows operating system monopoly'.

Top story for Saturday, October 11, 2008:
Microsoft strikes back as browser war rages on

"Thousands more found dead today as orbital lasers owned by Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) were deployed to eliminate useres of competing browser products. Using code that interfaces with the GPS component of the DRM system now part of every home PC and relaying this information to Microsoft, the beams were very precisely targeted, according to a Microsoft press release. Though many are outraged, the acts are uncontestable in court as each of the victims were also users of Microsoft Windows and had agreed to the "No Open Source" clause in the EULA."

I think I spent too much time playing Cyberpunk 2020 as a kid...

Indeed, the browser wars are back

[d_jedi]

I was a die-hard IE guy. But what with CERT recommending using an alternate browser for security purposes.. and Microsoft's own recommendations for security all but disabling many sites (I believe their recommendation was to turn off active scripting).. that was when I switched browsers.

But, alas, because "Set program access and defaults" doesn't actually do $hit.. last weekend I was infected by spyware using IE. Nasty, nasty stuff that just won't die.

So IE is out for me.. I don't blame Microsoft for the malware (although I DO blame them for a link opening with IE when I had FF set as the default..).. but enough is enough.

The sites that don't work properly with FF are few.. and I can easily decide if the site is worthy of really browsing by using the open in IE extension.

My criticism of FF is that extensions break with each release, and that security updates are not available as patches (I could tolerate ONE of them.. but combined it's really a nuisance).

Re:Indeed, the browser wars are back

[shish]

Plugin compatability tends to be a post-1.0 sort of thing. It'll be here soon...

Re:*sigh* "Best Viewed"?

[Ilgaz]

It should be w3c strict xhtml compliant.

But guess what? Anyone tries to put ads etc to their sites breaks w3c recommedations. I forced a friend to do it on a new startup shop. No way.

So, either w3c recommends new recs or they sit with macromedia etc about flash.

Konqueror

[Domino]

What about Konqueror?

Simple

[Andy Dodd]

Because IE isn't standards-compliant and barfs on standards-compliant pages very often.

Re:Simple

[Jugalator]

Believe me, you can design standard compliant web pages that use both XHTML and CSS that views properly in IE. It's just a matter what stuff you use, but a sign of a skilled webmaster is that s/he design pretty and functional pages that view well in both e.g. IE and Firefox. I know it's possible, because I see such pages daily.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you post links to these pages that IE barfs on? And I mean pages that lots of people would visit, and visit daily; not those one-off pages that were put up just to show what kind of pages IE doesn't display correctly. I use IE as my main browser and can't remember ever running into a page that doesn't work correctly.

Re:Simple

[DogDude]

Because IE isn't standards-compliant and barfs on standards-compliant pages very often.

As far as these so-called standards go... who says that they're "standards"? I didn't vote for them or the group that designed them. The W3C doesn't own the web. The W3C doesn't even make a web browser! They're just some arbitrary 3rd party making arbitrary "standards". A "standard" is something that's either agreed upon by members using those standards or is de-facto in that it's what a majority uses and accepts. IE is the standard. I'm sorry to break the news to you, but IE's way of doing things has been the standard for several years now. The W3C has been irrelevant for quite a while now. I can say that the new "standard" to make a hyperlink is to use the [thisisahyperlink] tag, and it would be about as relevant as the W3C. So, accoring to my "standards", no browser measures up!

Re:Simple

[Blakey Rat]

Ok, but what about other browsers that aren't Firefox but are mostly, or completely, compliant?

What about MacIE 5.x? What about Safari, or other KHTML browsers? What about Opera?

Maybe you'd be better off putting a "Best viewed in anything other than Windows IE. Mac IE is fine" label on the site. Or maybe, like everyone else is saying, you should just freakin' code to standards and not pollute your website with dumb slogans.

It's not IE vs. Firefox, you know. IE runs on two platforms, and the Mac version does very well, thank-you-very-much. Safari is the standard browser on OS X, and Opera has been compliant for longer than Firefox has even existed.

Re:Simple

[handslikesnakes]

The W3C doesn't own the web. The W3C doesn't even make a web browser!

Actually, yes they do.
Troll.

Re:Simple

[DogDude]

Well, how the heck am I supposed to know that? A year+ worth of web logs show -zero- "Amaya" browsers.

Again, that's my point... these "Standards" are a moot point. They're ivory tower idealism that are simply irrelevant. It's kind of like the /. "cracker" vs. "hacker" thing. It's irrelevant, because if you're outside of the tiny geek community, nobody will know what you're talking about and nobody cares. It's kind of like some militia group claiming their 100 acres in northern Michigan to be a free country. You can say it all you want, but that doesn't make it true. You can scream "W3C makes the standards" all you want, but reality says otherwise. So, nitpick all you want, say "troll" all you want, but you're not going to have any impact, whatsoever on reality.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

That was the best reality bitch slap I've read in a long time. Thank you.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, how the heck am I supposed to know that? A year+ worth of web logs show -zero- "Amaya" browsers.

If it's not in your web logs, it does not exist? How utterly ignorant. And from that kind of shielded existance comes the following rant:

You can scream "W3C makes the standards" all you want, but reality says otherwise. So, nitpick all you want, say "troll" all you want, but you're not going to have any impact, whatsoever on reality.

You're designing for MSIE, so of course you want to assert that MSIE is the standard. Otherwise you would admit that you disregarded standards, inviting everyone to deride you.

Re:Simple

[zoips]

I suppose the sad part of all this is that currently you are the only person who thinks that the W3C doesn't set the standards. Reality is, everyone (Microsoft included) defers to the W3C in terms of what is standard, but that does not (obviously) prevent them from implementing functionality not defined in the standards.

Re:Simple

[DogDude]

I'm the only person? Do this. Go ask random people who sets web browser standards. I'll wager cash that the vast majority of the adult, human population on this planet has never heard of the W3C, and could care less. As long as it works in IE, that's all that matters to them.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Joe Random's opinion is even more uninformed than yours. Your point being?

Re:Simple

[mindriot]

I suppose, then, whatever standards the IETF make don't matter either?

Good thing they never had any impact, whatsoever, on reality. You should just be glad that these IP, TCP, and HTTP things happen to work with IE...

say "troll" all you want

Troll.

Re:Simple

[elemental23]

the Mac version does very well

While this may have been true at one time, IE/Mac hasn't been updated in even longer than IE/Win and does a far worse job at rendering modern, CSS-based web sites. Hopefully Safari will catch on, and quickly.

Re:Simple

[Ambassador Kosh]

THERE IS NO IE STANDARD! There never has been and I am getting sick of people thinking that. Microsoft has not documented jack on the correct way for IE to understand various pieces of html. IE 6 on windows 98, windows 2000 and windows XP do NOT render html the same way and they choke on different quirks. Different patches can drastically change the way pages render. If you code to IE you are coding to the IE on your desk and not to some IE browser standard. The best way to make stuff work across many versions of IE is to code to the actual w3c standard for html and css and stick to the subset that IE supports.

Until MS publishes their own standard and has a tool to check code for compliance it is not a standard and never can be.

Also the w3c is not just some arbitrary body that does these standards. MS even participates on many of the standards they just don't implement them.

Re:Simple

[handslikesnakes]

There's obviously no way that anybody can stop people from writing browsers to whatever standards they like. I happen to think that a diverse and directed group like the W3C will do a better job of producing standards that are elegant, complete and useful than a company writing browsers with its own goals in mind (or worse, no goals at all).

If IE were even introducing its own standards I might be inclined to agree with you. As things stand, the web has stagnated because IE has as well. XHTML and CSS are headed in exciting directions; IE is heading towards supporting PNGs and :hover. If I have to choose a leader, it'll be the one who's going somewhere.

Re:*sigh* "Best Viewed"?

[Ford Prefect]

Why do people continue to insist on stupid "Best viewed with X" labels. Your website should be developed to display properly on any standards-compliant browser, and not be restricted to a particular platform or application.

I put a 'Best viewed using a computer!' notice up on a site I built.

Along with a 'Web server powered by electricity'...

A little bit bitter, don't you think.

[Anonymous Coward]

Andreessen is venting a little pent up bitterness for his lack of vision and inability to execute.

Don't step out of character you guys. Andreessen commercialized a free product. He is one of the enemy according to your by-laws. His failure does not grant him redemption.

Re:Browser Wars - FireFox Menace.. On meesa planet

[davidsyes]

...May Chewy have chompoerhhea and chomp the crap out of ms' sphincter while Jar Jar slaps ms across the face with his big flappy-assed ears.

Oh, and ms... may the FARTS be with you! Better stock up on some Millennium Talcum, or medicated Tiger Balm...'cuz the RIPPER is coming to REAP you, after the REAPER comes to RIP you...

Check out the new AOL browser!!!

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

And an interesting story at eWeek, AOL is going to release its own browser based on IE except with tabs, and something called tear-away tabs (pull the tab off into its own browser. Of course this is really only IE highly customized with plug-ins and ad / spyware...

God. This AOL thing will probably spread like a virus.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1668477,00.as p

As the hubbub of alternative Web browsers keeps growing--from speculation over a so-called "Gbrowser" from search-engine leader Google Inc. to the many advances in the open-source Mozilla project--in the background, America Online Inc. has been quietly testing its own Web browser, dubbed "AOL Browser," for more than a month.

Departing from its past embedded strategy, the company has made the forthcoming AOL Browser a standalone piece of software and it will not need the America Online client software to be running to be used, sources familiar with the software said. In what could be considered a surprising move, AOL Browser is based on Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer and not on AOL's Netscape browser engine.

Sources said the AOL Browser contains many features missing from the current IE software, such as tabbed browsing and "tear-off tabs," where a tabbed window can be torn off into a new window. For privacy-conscious users, a "clear my footprints" feature allows for fast clearing of browser history, cookies, cache and recent searches. A pop-up blocker is also included.

Another useful interface element in the beta software is the "preview" of pages represented by buttons or tabs, sources said. The AOL Browser can display thumbnail images of pages as users hover over the back and forward buttons or over another browser tab.

Meanwhile, AOL's trademark "Running Man" graphic will be used to indicate page-load progress.

Re:Check out the new AOL browser!!!

[rts008]

Nothing could be more perfect: Windows OS, AOL, and AOL's IE based browser. The only improvement that I can think of: bundle CoolWebSearch,Gator, and CODE RED virus with new browser......Sheesh! Unfortunately, your word choice "...spread like a virus..." is RIGHT ON!

Would you please learn how to mod...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not Offtopic. It is a joke, which, if funny, would be modded Funny. It is a lame joke, so mod it Overrated. I find Overrated is rather under used. It is very applicable to many situations, such the mountain of "In Soviet Russia..." jokes. Some are still funny, but most a poorly thought out, poorly written and, hence, Overrated.

Now, mod me into oblivion because I injured your already fragile, self important image.

For me it has...

[yoshi_mon]

After being ignored the 1st time I decided to keep a copy the text of my latest email to Bellsouth. When trying to access their page with my latest version of Opera I am told to "upgrade" to IE or Netscape. For the record most of the times when I access this page it's to pay my bill.

---
Once again I would like to renew my request that your website be updated to support all modern browsers. The idea that by running a current version of Opera but then being told to "upgrade" speaks poorly of your website and it's staff.

The fact that all one must do to access Bellsouth's website is to change the user agent gives lie to the fact any upgrade is need.

Please respect your customers by allowing them the option of using whatever modern browser they wish instead of making them think that they must use a browser that has so many security issues that the federal government has dissuaded it's use or one that has become outdated.

Thank you.
---

Yes it may be a little harsh but sometimes you have to be pretty forthright to get past the corperate mindset. Until I get a response I plan on sending this same text once a week.

Tactics?

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll only improve IE by adding the features that other browsers have, such as tabbed browsing, popup-blocker (in SP2), etc.

Then there will be no compelling reason to switch, other than security, which Gecko browsers have gotten a taste of lately.

Microsoft will eventually have to do something to fix IE. Get rid of ActiveX(ploit).

IE 4 was a much better browser than Netscape 4.

Microsoft has every right to bundle its browser with its OS.

Yeah, Microsoft spelled with a $!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're so trendy and hip and - dare I say it - edgy!

Stick it to The Man! Hack the planet!

You stupid little emo fuck.

What is the Reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Other browsers are certainly gaining ground, but I wonder how much of this is due to features (tabbed browsing comes to mind) and how much is due to security and bug issues.

The reason that is important is because the former is the way to sustainable growth and the latter is not. It's a lot like voting for a candidate rather than voting against a candidate. I would forego some features for a less buggy/more secure browser.

Apple's Safari = IE

[greymond]

I hate both IE and Safari, but at work I had to use them since my Dual G5 with 10.3 only came with Safari installed and my P4 with XP pro only came with IE installed.

Of course i'm posting this from Mozilla which runs great on both machines.

Of course i've noticed some websites like Americanexpress.com and my banks website seem to have trouble with any browser other than IE on the pc (IE on the mac seems to work exactly like Safari)

Dear Sirs Of Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

I Am Pleased To Make Announcment To World That I Am Having Become Gay. I Seek Now Warm Male For Slow Action In Region Of Buttock. Can You Dig Me?

Sidney

LAYER and JSSS?

[Numen]

That would be the properly selected ones like the LAYER tag then? Or JSSS as the prefered alternative to CSS?

Netscapes track record pre-Mozilla with the W3C makes MS look like angels.

Firefox is a fantastic browser, but lets not start revising history. The original Netscape sucked and deserved to fall flat on its face.

Re:LAYER and JSSS?

[I confirm I'm not a]

Sir, you deserve dome sort of award for not mentioning the hated blink-tag.

(Apologies if it's bringing back horrible memories)

Re:LAYER and JSSS?

[torstenvl]

That's not how standards work.

Standards are agreements on best practices. They are not there to dictate what happens. Sometimes they are innovative, but seriously. Why do you think C89 was wildly popular but C99 is only sort of supported on some compilers?

Re:LAYER and JSSS?

[kcb93x]

Oh damn...and I just encountered the marquee tag just the other day...the horror...both mentioned in less than a 24 hour period...

YOU'VE RUINED ALL MY YEARS OF THERAPY!

Re:LAYER and JSSS?

[HermanAB]

Hrrm, both the blink and marquee tags are better than the paperclip...

An interesting quote...

[Ironsides]

"If I were [Microsoft] I'd take another look, and I would see how I could screw with other people's businesses with this monopoly [I] have," he said.

Imagine if for some strange reason after a security update, all the e-mails and preferences and what have you of Mozilla/Firefox were corupted and/or Mozilla/Firefox was unable to access the web do to a slight change in Microsofts API's.

Alternatively they could include something in IIS & IE that makes it imposible for other browsers to impersonate IE and have IIS only allow IE to connect to it.

Browser Tags

[TiggertheMad]

I like those 'Best viewed with X' tags that people put on their sites. It lets me know imediately that the designer is a total tool, and that I should probably just browse elsewhere, because the site is going to be total crap. It saves me the trouble of having to make the distinction myself...

Re:Browser Tags

[maxwell demon]

I hope you make an exception for the "Best viewed with any browser" button.

Re:Browser Tags

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you make an exception for the "Best viewed with any browser" button.

I imagine that the fully-working page that appears in that browser is testament enough.

Sounds like something from the Department of Redundancy Department.

Re:Browser Tags

[maxwell demon]

I hope you make an exception for the "Best viewed with any browser" button.

I imagine that the fully-working page that appears in that browser is testament enough.

In that browser? Could you please tell me which specific browser is the "any browser"? Sounds to me like you'd also be lost with the message "press any key to continue" because you can't find the "any" key on your keyboard.

I hope FireFox does not win

[Ced_Ex]

Well, my thought is sort of double edged. As good as FireFox is (and it is my only browser), I think it's better for it to remain under the radar.

All the hacks you see to get around IE is only because IE is in the number one spot. It's easier and more economical to write a malicious piece of code to spread on IE than on other browsers with limited distribution.

Makes sense doesn't it? Write one piece of code to infect 80% of users, or write code to infect only 20%, which would make more sense.

I think that if Firefox were to remain just slightly below IE, we would still have a good browser, but without attracting all the bad attention from those who are willing to exploit it.

Aren't you happy with how the rankings are now?

Re:I hope FireFox does not win

[GFBurke]

Your therory is good.. However FF is not full of the holes IE is. + it dosnt run activeX. So... I don't see a problem. Plus there are updating it. unlike IE ever gets..

Re:I hope FireFox does not win

[T-Keith]

Seems to me a program that is only 5MB downloaded is going to be easier to patch then one that's "update" is 25MB+.

Bottom line is that IE's security problems aren't 100% a result of it's popularity.

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Andreessen warned that 'competition could compel the company [Microsoft] to use aggressive tactics to protect its Windows operating system monopoly'."

it seems probable that tomorrow morning the sun will rise in the east.

Sorry...

[yoshi_mon]

I hate replying to my own posts but here is a link of what people that don't have the correct user agent string see.

I find it very condescending and frankly, as you may have guessed, it's pissed me off.

Are the wars ever to end

[Mstrgeek]

Don't we all know this is never going to end there always going to be one trying to better then other? It not only the well known ones for example Mozlla, crazy browser and others trying to take a way form the monster but they are all trying to make a stand for them self in the hard market of Internet browsers I did a simple search on Google and this is what I found

Results 1 - 10 of about 11,000,000 for Internet browser. (0.36 seconds)

There is something here to be said about the war of browser So what I am getting is don't miss count the under dog

Maybe they meant they used CSS2

[denjin]

IE has really poor CSS2 support. I imagine they are using it on the site is all...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

what about Lynx

[uberrhino]

How come no one ever mentions Lynx? its a great little browser, it has a small footprint is fast and not htat hard to use. No pics for clogging up the pipe...

Re:what about Lynx

[Anonymous Coward]

uberrhino we don't need to mention Lynx because you already have! In all seriousness I generally use lynx when I'm looking at a locally saved web document of some sort, and I don't feel like parsing the content from the markup with my brain. It becomes my 'less' substitute for that purpose.

Still use IE?

[GFBurke]

People are still using IE? We need to educate - this is why 95% of machines come to my workbench for - scumeware. FireFox>all

Re:Still use IE?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that Firfox is full of it's own security problems (Are you patching all your FF machines?). But yeah, maybe you'll be safe for... 6 months?

Fix the PROBLEM not the SYMPTOM. Ensure proper security consciousness/tactics and you will never have a problem no matter what software you use. Constantly jumping software to cure security problems is the lowest, stupidest way of handling the problem.

Re:Still use IE?

[MeatMan]

I bet that 95% of the machines that cross your workbench are due to PEBCAK, not IE (or scumeware... whatever), give us all a break. I've never had a single problem with IE, and I've tried all the 'rebel' browsers out there. Nothing could beat IE, nothing was supported like IE, and nothing will. IE works, it's supported, stop trying to be nerd 'cool' and just use what's proven to be the best browser there, IE.

Re:Still use IE?

[GFBurke]

lol. Some of us do this for a living. Some don't - it's obvoius. Yes, 90% of there scumware is from IE. I know, it't how I make the bucks. IE is frik'n gay. Get over it. People are being educated. I educate well over 100 people monthly - it will continue. Been using FF for a year now - havnt seen one pop-up. btw, Im "Geek cool" - but thanks for playing. GG~ Ramsinks.com

Re:Still use IE?

[GFBurke]

btw, your correct. -"We" dont have the issue with IE. It's the people who have no clue what "Slashdot" is. Thats the majority.

Best browser

[XxtraLarGe]

I'm a web designer/programmer among other things at work, so I have most of the browsers available for testing. I use IE as my main browser on my PC, but I also have FireFox & Netscape for testing purposes. At home I have an iMac. I have Safari, Netscape Navigator & IE installed. I tried OmniWeb, but was unimpressed. IMHO, Safari is far and away the best browser out there, and I'm not even using the version that supports RSS. I still have to use IE whenever I want to print something (odd that an MS product on the Mac would print better?), but that's about all. Maybe you PC people will luck out and Apple will make Safari for Windows. I am thoroughly convinced that if Macromedia ever decided to make a web browser, they would blow everybody out of the water!

Re:Best browser

[HuguesT]

Safari has one huge failing: it doesn't display the URL of the links when you hover your mouse over them like mozilla/firefox does in its status bar. In fact I have not found a way to display the real URL of a link in Safari short of looking at the source of the page, or copying and pasting the link in an editor, which is hugely user-unfriendly. In these days of phising attacks this is unacceptable, and this is why I use firefox on MacOS/X.

Re:Best browser

[rampant mac]

Odd, when I hovered the cursor over "Reply to This" it shows:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=124895&op=Repl y&threshold=2&commentsort=0&tid=154&mode=thread&pi d=10471387

Re:Best browser

[ckelly5]

what? it does. it shows them in the status bar. At least mine does in OS X 10.3 (Safari 1.2.3 (v125.9))

or am I looking at the wrong thing? perhaps I need a link with an alt tag to see your complaint?

Re:Best browser

[hawaiian717]

I still have to use IE whenever I want to print something (odd that an MS product on the Mac would print better?), but that's about all.

I have found Mac IE has done a really nice job of printing. Firefox usually does a decent job, but every now and then I'm not happy with the way something comes out from Firefox, so I use IE. Windows IE and Netscape 4 weren't nearly as good.

Mac IE is actually a pretty decent browser. It is one of the best I can find for OS 9, as newer versions of Mozilla and Opera work only on OS X. It's reasonably standards compliant. But it doesn't do popup blocking or tabbed browsing.

Stop it - the browser wars are NOT back - poll

[Anonymous Coward]

Please guys, stop the with the conjecture:

IE (5)
27 %
Netscape (5)
27 %
Opera (2)
11 %
Lynx (nil)
0 %
WebTv (1)
5 %
Dunno (nil)
0 %
Other (5)
27 %
--------

OK? So let's stop already with the BS.

I would...

[Anonymous Coward]

I would kill you in front of your mother for Safari on the PC

*cough*Uninstall*IE*cough*

[ForresterInc]

http://www.litepc.com/ IE is not impossible to uninstall... it's just difficult

My reason for sticking with IE

[openSoar]

The main, perhaps only reason I still use IE is that I find the Yahoo Companion toolbar extremely useful - mainly it's ability to integrate with my online Yahoo Bookmarks and allow me to store/retrieve/edit them from.

If there was something similar but more generic for Firefox, I'd probably switch over..

Any suggestions?

Re:My reason for sticking with IE

[0x0d0a]

What's a Yahoo Bookmark?

Re:My reason for sticking with IE

[openSoar]

online hierarchical storage of bookmarks - here and the Companion toolbar allows you to use/save/edit them - i like having my bookmarks stored remotely so i can access them from any machine - the *decent* gui the Companion toolbar brings makes it even more useful.

Re:My reason for sticking with IE

[abelsson]

Try Bookmarks Synchronizer.

Re:My reason for sticking with IE

[openSoar]

thanks - i'll take a look.

the reason i've stuck with yahoo is that it's possible to do bookmark administration via a web page so if you're on a different machine, it's still quite straightforward to add new bookmarks into your set.

it's a shame yahoo doesn't publish some kind of web api for accessing bookmarks - perhaps only for paying customers - a bit like email..

Re:My reason for sticking with IE

[cameleon]

I'd give del.icio.us a try. It uses labels instead of folders, which are much more useful, and there's a Firefox plugin (and also an IE one, IIRC).

Re:My reason for sticking with IE

[openSoar]

that looks quite promising...

Flipflopper

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr. A. does not seem to be able to make up his mind about Netscape/Mozilla. When he started Netscape, he obviously thought it was great. Then he left, and there was Mozilla and he thought it was irrelevant piece of junk. Now he thinks browser wars are back and Mozilla (Firefox) is great. Give me a break.

Re:Huh? Will longhorn become...

[SilentChris]

I'm sorry, but you've taken the "change letters in a word to express your disgust" principle to ridiculous extremes. M$ is acceptable here at Slashdot. "LongTHORN" is just silly. I vote to suspend your account. Any other takers?

Competition is a good thing...

[JimLynch]

A renewed browser war is going to benefit everybody. Microsoft has sat on its ass for far, far too long and allowed IE to stagnate. That was arrogant on their part and now they have to play catch-up to the Mozilla/Firefox/Safari browsers. Regardless of which browser you prefer, real competition and innovation is a good thing and should be welcomed by everybody.

firefox...

[Run4yourlives]

runs our OWA just fine thanks.

Try it out, you may have some issues with your app, but whaterver owa is doing it seems to work fine without activex.

Re:firefox...

[Kenja]

OWC is ActiveX. Firefox has no direct support for ActiveX. However there are some plugins that claim to add it. I've not found one that works with OWC, if you have I'd love to hear about it.

Re:firefox...

[Run4yourlives]

well, how's this for a plugin... If I go to my company's owa page using using firefox, I can read my email.

Don't harp to me about ActiveX or whatever other tech, I'm telling you mine works fine. Why don't you try yours?

Re:*sigh* "Best Viewed"?

[eugene ts wong]

Because some browsers don't offer features, even though they are standards compliant. Also, each organization will prioritize which standards are supposed to be met. No browser is perfect, and because of that, the user must choose.

Doing my bit

[cakefool]

I swapped to Firefox the other day, and will continue using it for the forseeable. (I incidently also downloaded spybot S&D, AVG and ADAware, which helped considerably)

My favourite bits? tabbed browsing and reading pages before they assemble properly - stops me waiting for annoying images etc to load.

Fantastic.

Incidently, can I combine this with my recent discovery of what a Grue is to upgrade from nerd to Geek(TM)?

Re:Doing my bit

[dgagley]

If you keep your lantern on you can keep Grues at bay.

I have used Firefox for a while but it still is a little quirky on OS X. Even with that it still works better than IE. I have switched on my Mac, PC and Linux boxes.

Marc who?

[Electric Eye]

I don't know why fellow members of the press give any attention to Marc Asdreeson. Look, he was lucky where he ended up during and after college. Since then, what exactly has he done? Nothing. If I were him, I'd enjoy my millions made of Netscape stock and go away. He really has no authority or experience to really talk much about the internet anymore. I have no interest in what he says because in my mind he's a one-hit wonder. It's like paying attention to Sally Jesse Raphael talking about Howard Stern movign to sat radio. There's nothing there.
Just my opinion.

Re:Marc who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Andreessen warned that 'competition could compel the company [Microsoft] to use aggressive tactics to protect its Windows operating system monopoly'."

Wow, what a visionary. No one's ever said this before....

Remind us again, /., why this is even news.

the larger the market share of firefox,

[Run4yourlives]

The stronger my argument for standards compliant code is.

The real issue here is that regardless of what ms does to counter this, once a majority of designers are writing standards compliant code, they'll be forced to produce a product that is compliant.

Hooray.

Re:Huh? Will longhorn become...

[Anonymous Coward]

Take that, MicroDOLLARSIGNoft!

The Linux community sure put you in your plaCENTSIGNe!

Re:*sigh* "Best Viewed"?

[timealterer]

On a public website, of course. On an internal one, you get an interesting issue - it's significantly cheaper to code everything so it works in a standards-compliant browser(s), and only test in that browser(s). You won't lose any customers, and if you work where I do, Explorer is discouraged due to security issues anyway. So it's cheaper, and... it's cheaper.

Of course, people who have done a lot of CSS know very well that "Coding to standards" does not suffice for Internet Explorer - it's a lot of work to figure out what CSS breaks in IE, and how it does so, especially since you've probably got the newbie working on the intranet.

Browser Wars != innovation?

[grayrest]

Last July Andreessen was saying that innovation in browsers was dead. Everything that makes Firefox great now was in a year ago. It's cool that he founded Netscape and hacked on it and all (if I've got my history right), but how is he an expert on the browser market when he just parrots what the media is saying?

Internet Explorer is NOT Free

[gamer4Life]

It's included in the cost of the Windows operating system. Saying it's free is like saying you're purchasing a hamburger and getting the patty and pickles for free.

Re:Internet Explorer is NOT Free

[almostmanda]

And yet, McDonald's will allow you to to take off the pickles if you don't want them.

Mentor

[Anonymous Coward]

I used mouse gestures on the Mentor E-CAD system, on an old Apollo (DomainOS) W/S back in the late '80s or early '90s.

I think that was back when there was only the one true browser, Mosaic. Long before anyone at MSFT could spell Internet.

One word:

[mrchaotica]

XAML

They're back!

[Brandybuck]

Damn right the browser wars are back! I won't name names, to avoid embarassing the guilty, but on Monday I ran across a site that had "this page best viewed with Firefox" on it. I cried.

Browser-specific gestures

[Anonymous Coward]

I was using basic mouse gesture software on the Mac in the 80s. The point was the Opera was the first to re-introduce them into a web browser, along with tabbed browsing, etc. It was in no other browser at the time.

Later on, Mozilla caught on to it as well.

Word has serious issues between versions, however.

[Richard Steiner]

It's a nice tool for documents of small or medium size, but the document format is a nightmare. Try changing the margins in Word 97, for example, and then reading the result in Word 2000. The margins are all messed up in many cases... :-(

If only they'd kept the document format simple and added a nice "review codes" feature like WordPerfect used to have...

They already do

[KenFury]

ASP.net,outlook web access, CRM, sharepoint, and pretty much all other MS web apps will not work on anything other than IE. Firefox activeX plug-in still does not get around this. Forcing Corp. users to stay on IE is a great way to keep people stuck on IE.

Re:They already do

[cavac]

I also like IE:

From my current standpoint of developing a commercial web based logistic system it's nice to have most users use IE. Whenever something goes wrong, blame the bug on Microsoft. Given a creative use of keywords, you can *always* find a M$ knowledgebase article about IE that more or less matches you problem...

It's Microsoft, not Micro$oft.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ass.

Build a better mouse trap...

[DavidBrown]

But I thought that Microsoft got rid of all of the competition by illegal exercise of its monopoly power?

The good news is that innovation (including better security) are good reasons to switch from even heavily-entrenched products.

The bad news is that some people may have to admit that Microsoft isn't as guilty as they want it to be. IE beat Netscape for the simple reason that it sucked less. Sure, maybe being a "monopoly" helped, but that doesn't mean much when browsers were and are still given away for free (a trend which M$ didn't start).

If Firefox overtakes IE, I win. If IE gets better, I still win. If Netscape pulls out from under years of browsers not any better and usually worse and more bloaty than IE, I still win. I win, I win, I win. And, honestly, I don't care who else wins with me. It can be MS, or Apple, or the open source community. The point is that competition is still alive in the browser world, even if all of the things Netscape whined about were true.

Re:*sigh* "Best Viewed"?

[Brandybuck]

I agree with you totally on principle, but on practice, replace "standards-compliant browser" with "browser conforming to a reasonable subset of the standards".

Why? Because no browser is 100% conformant to the standards. And even if you did find one that was, five minutes later there will be a new standard it won't be conformant with. Like it or not, web standards are a moving target. This doesn't mean the lowest common denominator of standards. That's why I said "reasonable".

Special award announced

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations, sir. Your use of a dollar sign in the word "Microsoft" for a total of five times clearly illustrates your devotion to the machine. The hegemony remains unbroken because of true die-hards like yourself. I hereby deem you worth of the "M$ Crunchie" award. May it be an heirloom for you and your future namesakes, and may adding dollar signs in other instances of the word somehow strike back at the machine that is Microsoft. Thank you.

Re:Special award announced

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is more pathetic, someone using dollar signs or someone making three separate posts expressing outrage over it. lol

Is that you, Bender?

[Anonymous Coward]

...soldered a big metal "e" onto my ass.

As in "Bite my shiny..."?

Re:Huh? Will longhorn become...

[falsified]

No man, you don't get it. Thorns are bad. Like Micro$oft! And Window$$$$$$$ LongTHORN. Duh.

Give that man some mod points!

[Anonymous Coward]

Most underrated comment of this story, by far. It's not "flamebait" by a long shot.

Re:*sigh* "Best Viewed"?

[91degrees]

I put a 'Best viewed using a computer!' notice up on a site I built.

THOSE OF US WHO GET INTERNET ACCESS VIA TELEGRAPH FIND THIS DISCRIMINATORY STOP WE DONT ALL HAVE COMPUTERS STOP SO PLEASE STOP

Along with a 'Web server powered by electricity'...

SOME PEOPLE I KNOW STILL USE SMOKE SIGNALS STOP

I'm finding this to be less of a problem

[G27 Radio]

It seems to me that the typical person I deal with lately catches on pretty quickly to the idea of using a different web browser. Every single home computer I've worked on in the last couple months has been barely usable due to all the spyware on them.

After cleaning up their machines I install Firefox and tell them about the pop-up blocking and tabbed browsing. I tell them that at this point they should only use IE as a last resort. The explaination literally takes about 30 seconds and I haven't had any problems with people not "getting it."

I've done this for easily a dozen different people in the last month, and every one I've talked to afterwards has mentioned how much nicer it is browsing with Firefox.

Maybe I've just been lucky with the people I've done work for recently, but it seems to me that most people are more than happy to make the switch once the software is installed and demonstrated to them.

Undoubtedly there are people out there that just can't be bothered (from what I've read on here at least,) but at that point it's their problem and they'll be paying me if I have to come back and clean the crap off their computer again.

PS: I just wish Firefox would render Slashdot consistently. WTF?

Re:I'm finding this to be less of a problem

[The I Shing]

Yeah, I'm with you on the problem with /. being rendered weird on Firefox.

I've gotten people off of Explorer and onto Firefox, but on a couple of occasions, they've noticed some single feature lacking (or apparently lacking, since some features are just activated differently), and they go right back to Explorer, like a battered wife who goes back to her abusive husband because she misses his famous potato pancakes. And then I have to go back over to their house and try to get the damn spyware and browser hijacks off of their computers again.

What to do? What to do?

Re:I'm finding this to be less of a problem

[trolman]

You must be installing high speed internet access? Same report here on the PCs that are near un-usable. I have not been installing the alternate browsers on those PCs as a rule but will do that now. Thanks for the good post.

Microsoft.com

[OreoCookie]

Until recently microsoft.com was un-usable in Firefox (I assume deliberately). Now I notice that it renders perfectly in Firefox. If you pull it up in Firefox and IE side by side, you cannot tell the difference. This tells you something.

Opera blew its lead. Dwindles from here.

[guidryp]

Opera did pioneer many browser features. I have been a long time Opera convert and fan (I think I started with 3.5). Every once in a while I would try Mozilla or lately firefox.

Finally with the PR release, I am now using Firefox near exclusively.

Firefox with the PR release is now more stable than Opera for me. Firefox, due to its open plug in architecture now outstrips Opera in features.

Due to Mozilla/Netscape heritage, Firefox is better supported on the pages I visit.

I do miss some aspects of Opera. It is slicker, the tabbed browsing still works better than TBE in firefox. And I love operas instant back/forward on cached pages.

But Opera is missing the support and some plugins I can't live without like flash block.

I can't see anything but dwindling market share going forward now. I no longer mention Opera as an alternate to IE. I just tell them about Firefox.

Huh?

[reptilicus]

---Safari has one huge failing: it doesn't display the URL of the links when you hover your mouse over them like mozilla/firefox does in its status bar---

Huh? Turn on the status bar using View: Status Bar (or command /). I see the URL of all links when my mouse hovers over them.

Google letting us down.

[bazooka_foo]

I went to google zeitgeist to look at browser stats. (my favorite part of Zeitgeist) Not there anymore.

I emailed google and this is what they said

Thank you for your inquiry regarding the Google Zeitgeist.

As a result of user feedback we have decided to focus our efforts on the international expansion of the Google Zeitgeist and have currently removed the data about Web browsers, operating systems and languages used to access Google. You can view historic data in the Google Zeitgeist archives, http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist/archive.html .

Best regards,

Daniel Lemin Google Inc. dlemin@google.com

MS didn't kill Netscape to own free browser market

[danieleran]

The threat Netscape posed was providing an alternative platform to Windows for development. By eliminating Netscape on the client side, MS could change ("extend") the rules to ensure that, even on the web, development would still require Windows.

It does seem to get forgotten that Netscape was being rather arrogant and dismissed MS as a dinosaur they were going to replace, with the suggestion that Netscape would own the web instead of MS. It turned out that Netscape didn't really bother to keep up, and their development efforts simply stagnated while MS aggressively competed (using their 1000 lb monopoly in desktop OS) in an effort to dismiss the threat.

How many other companies have arrogantly suggested they were going to shut MS down, then simply sat there while MS took a few stabs and ended up making them irrelevant (at least for a time)? Incompetent, lazy competition seems to be the reason MS is in business:

Apple in the 90's "Yawn! Windows 95 is us in 89!" 10 years of stagnant System 7 left 'beleaguered Apple' for dead.
Sun's Java "We are the next platform!" Then undercut when they tried to get Microsoft to deliver their product for them on Windows.
IBM OS/2 "Better Windows than Windows!" Then installed Windows on their own PCs anyway.

Contrast that with their recent successful efforts at competing with MS:

Apple's clear innovation in OS X, and delivery of functional software that simply replaced WMP in music downloads using fashion, engineering and responsiveness to fair-use rights. Microsoft talks big but has lost the head of the table in desktop OS development and music downloads.

Netscape's Mozilla project stopped talking about how they were replacing MS on the desktop and simply worked on making a better browser. MS' rush to push IE into the OS resulted in sloppy work that opens an ugly can of security and malware exploits. Users find Mozilla a useful alternative while MS stews.

IBM stopped trying to keep up with Windows on the desktop and focused instead on using Linux to build solutions for their clients. IBM shifts revenue from software to services and their their clients benefit while IBM profits.

Lesson to be learned?

Don't talk big, just do the work. Find out what the market wants and supply a need, don't just assume you will be "the next Microsoft" and sit back waiting for the PR you sent out to make it so.

Memory stick browser

[Jaycatt]

Is there a browser that can run entirely off a USB memory stick? A while back I tried to do this with Firefox, but the sticky part was how (depending on which drives are present in the PC you put it into) it gets a different drive letter associated with it. Could be F: on one PC, and E: on another. For Firefox, there was a batch file workaround (that never quite worked right) and so I gave up on it. Have things changed?

I basically want to be able to travel with my browser and links to various PCs and just have it work without a lot of trouble.

guess...

[n0dez]

...who's back!

Question

[Anonymous Coward]

this mini article makes no sense here on the slashdot. how does a "browser war" even influence Window's "Operating System" Monopoly

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill, is that you? Billy boy...They let you get out already?

How to display URL

[HotButteredHampster]

1. Go to the view menu
2. Select "Status Bar"
3. There is no step 3!

HBH

Not all bad for Microsoft

[Jesus IS the Devil]

If they give a few % points in market share to alternate browsers, but keep enough power where they can still limit the shares, then it might get the DOJ off their backs in the future.

Seems like a plan to me...

D'oh

[Anonymous Coward]

> Jesus, use GIFs, JPGs

Those do NOT have alpha-transparancy, idiot. Shut up when you don't even know what it is that is talked about.

Re:Huh? Will longhorn become...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got a Longhorn... IN MY PANTS!

Re:Huh? Let's lobby IBM to Dual-License SmartSuite

[davidsyes]

IBM wouldn't even need that much to get a new version of SmartSuite, Linux-native out the door:

10 devs @ $45/hr x 10 hours= $4,500 per day * 90 days would be $405,000. Take it to 180 days and just double that, still under $1,000,000 (not counting payroll taxes, and other costs...)

-----

I for one wish enough LINUX USERS who have access to a windoze box would load up SmartSuite and USE it for a week. You'll like about 80% of it more than the stuff in OpenOffice.org. I use them both, but SmartSuite is THE, THE, THE reason I am using Win4Lin on my Mandrake-based laptop. I cannot DO word processing without WordPro. It has a kick-ass documentfeature that makes sections and divisions of embedded or linked documents. It makes OO.o's so-called "sections" look like an utter, contemptable JOKE.

As for end-user, ad-hoc, non-DBA WYSIWYG forms development for database backends, NO, I mean NO existing tool can top Lotus Approach. It is the reason I started using SmartSuite, when a former manager of mine at cc:Mail back around 1993 noticed I was trying to "misuse" a word processor. He balked at my idea of using WordPerfect to manage some 350 fictional characters and their attributes. He personally used Paradox for the beta support database, but he and his manager signed out for me SmartSuite for Windows 3.x as well as for OS/2. Of course, I used the win version, as it was more fully-featured, not to mention Approach for OS/2 wasn't available.

I WISH IBM would do for SmartSuite what Sun did for Star Office: Spin off and support a community-run version of a decent, well-liked, pervasive suite. But, for some reason (could it be internal alliances to ms stocks? IP reasons? lack of enthusiasm?) IBM simply refuses to even let THIS much happen:

- Send SmartSuite to some profiled, conscientious developers IBM can nurture to lead the later steps mentioned here; SS would be on tamper-proof laptops, with all the tools they need to work in any bootable distro of Linux/BSD in combination with Win4Lin

- Give the devs 2 weeks to look at the stuff they find compelling (most likely WordPro, Lotus Approach, and 1-2-3, but Organizer is very nice and compelling, as is Freelance...) and tell them to document what they would updated (likely based on their prior experience with Star Office, OpenOffice.org, KOffice, various other F/LOSS/OSS suites, and, err, umm, ms windows...)

-- Determine if the devs played by the rules and did not decompile SmartSuite, nor tamper with the laptop or try to debug data or code streams

-- Invite them to be "sequestered" for about 6 months with NOOOO outside contact, no tools other than what IBM provides (but it would be nice if the tools encourage conversion to or conversance with IBM's tools and not do damage to the OS Community...)

-- Place before the team of 5 or 10 devs a stripped codebase, the stripped code being the stuff IBM doesn't OWN, and doesn't like to license anymore

-- Tell the devs "replace the broken/missing/removed functionality" based on the tools we provide (hopefully these tools don't place any system or intellect demands upon the final end users)

-- After that phase is done, beta test it internally and maybe to a few users such as myself

-- expand the initial team of 5 or 10 devs to 3 teams of 5 each, with each team headed by a team leader, and all 3 teams headed by one manager

--Regression test the work, invite users to re-test it, take it gold, then release it to the community

If IBM offers a 3-year job contract to the best team that implements the most efficient and fastest submission of pre-community code, then I am SURE this project could be out before March of 2005. These hot-shot devs could be the initial startup of the SmartOpenSuite foundation, similar to the OpenOffice.org/Collab thing.

Come ON, IBM. I've been waiting for years to get SmartSuite out of emulation, not running in wine OR Win4Lin. I can't USE OO.o they way I can SmartSuite. Please stop breaking my heart by

google text ads

[ChristTrekker]

You obviously haven't upgraded Opera in some time. The ads are now text-based and relevant to the current page (courtesy of Google) and take up very little space on screen.

Microsoft using aggressive tactics?

[Sloosh13]

Andreessen warned that 'competition could compel the company [Microsoft] to use aggressive tactics to protect its Windows operating system monopoly'." I think I missed something. When exactly does Microsoft not behave in this fashion? I'd elaborate but I must attend to the "cease-and-desist" order I just received over this post.

Opera and JavaScript

[hkmwbz]

That Opera is bad at JavaScript is a myth from the old days when it didn't have proper DOM support.

Today, Opera does have proper DOM and JS support. It's just popular among hobbyist webmasters to claim otherwise. People who actually know their stuff, however, know that Opera handles JavaScript perfectly fine.

Sure, it might have bugs, but so does any browser, including Firefox.

Stop repeating the tired old lie you heard from someone else and keep passing on, that Opera has poor JS support. It doesn't anymore. It was fixed a couple of years ago.

Huh?

[Thu25245]

Odd. I have no problems using americanexpress.com to manage my account and pay bills in Safari.

OT I know but...

[Anonymous Coward]

We get it free with our StinkPads

the best laptops that I have ever used.

Even though I have newer laptops, when I am going on a trip I always take my IBM T-21 Thinkpad (bought in late 2000) with me because I know that it will not give me any problems. Thinkpads rock. Plus I have never had any trouble getting Linux to run on a Thinkpad, the same cannot be said for my Dell or Gateway laptops.

Pornzilla is for porno, not Opera!

[Anonymous Coward]

As others have said, Mozilla has gestures.

Not only that, but there's a version of Mozilla called "pornzilla" made *just* for people who are after pornography...

I suppose it was just inevitable at some point...

Re:I use Windows on my laptop...

[Patik]

Yes, there's still the occasional glitch or issue I don't know how to resolve, but I'm fine with that.

The same could be said for IE.

Opera's done it the right way.

[hkmwbz]

Even with all these features (including chat, mail, rss and so on!), Opera is still a smaller download than Firefox. Yes, even if you remove the exe compression.

With Opera you can start surfing with speed immediately. No need to browse through hundreds of extensions to find something useful. It has what I need, built in, smoothly integrated, and so on.

That Opera works "out of the box" is a huge plus. I don't want to build my own browser, I just want something that works.

Re:Opera's done it the right way.

[Taladar]

And the Features work together in Opera.

A very nice one I almost instantly missed in Firefox/Mozilla when I last tried was the use of the "Forward" and "Back" mouse gestures on pages with "Previous" and "Next" Links (like most Tex->HTML Unix Manuals Online e.g.). You can use the Forward Mouse Gesture (Mouse to the right while RMB pressed) instead of clicking on the "Next"-Button.

Another Feature Firefox and every other Browser I tried lacks is the detailed view how fast and how large the current Page is and in which stage of the Connection Negotiation Opera is at the moment (Looking up Hostname, Connecting, ...) which saves my time since I do not have to wait for timeouts for common errors.

What Opera does better than Firefox? Here you go..

[hkmwbz]

"I wouldn't call something with an annoying, distracting animation in the corner of my eye all the time to be a damn good browser."

You mean the useless throbber in Firefox which gives no useful information? You can't be talking about Opera, because it uses static text ads served by Google these days.

"XMLHTTPRequest object, which isn't "weird""

It's certainly non-standard.

"Smaller and faster? Not in my experience. More feature-packed? You haven't actually listed any features it has that its competitors do not."

We all know that many (or most?) FF extensions duplicate Opera functionality, and you can count features all you want, but here's the part where Opera takes the lead:

The way everything is put together!

Opera is an integrated package, and everything is created to fit smoothly together. Features work together, complementing each other, working together, working well. And it works without having to build your own browser!

In contrast, Firefox is stripped down, and you have to spend a long time finding useful extensions. Problem is, they don't fit very well together, or at least not as smoothly as Opera, and they tend to be rather buggy, and you get problems when upgrading...

Opera is just a smoother ride. No effort, everything is there, ready to use.

One thing is that Opera is innovative and introduces new features for Firefox to borrow. What's really nice is that these features are created with a common goal in mind, and require no additional downloads, and they work when you upgrade.

Oh, and Opera goes back instantly, which Firefox doesn't.

Re:Opera blew its lead. Dwindles from here.

[hkmwbz]

I still use Opera because I'm sick and tired of buggy and useless Firefox extensions. I'll happily pay for the convenience of a fully supported product which I know will work when I upgrade, and I won't have to upgrade every tiny little part separately.

like Star Wars?

[milatchi]

Netscape: No. I am your father
Mozilla: No. No. That's not true! That's impossible!
Netscape: Search your source code. You know it to be true.
Netscape: You can destroy the Internet Explorer. He has foreseen this. It is
your destiny. Join me, and we can rule the internet as father and son. Come with me. It's the only way.

IE + Maxthon addon is actually quite good.

[MtViewGuy]

I think once people discover the Maxthon plugin for Internet Explorer 5.5 and later, they will find out how IE can have the majority of the functionality of Firefox, especially the tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking features.

Didn't Microsoft said a few months ago they were seriously looking at releasing a new standalone verison of IE some time in 2005?

XULMaker

[bhsx]

http://xulmaker.mozdev.org There you go. Will it "gain widespread acceptance" now?

Browser War $$$

[Gravis88]

What I don't understand is where is all the money in browser development, that is why does Microsoft invest and defend IE so rigously when in the end they give it up for free?

Re:Browser War $$$

[rinkjustice]

Well, for one, alot of people don't know how to change their homepage. And what is the default homepage for IE? It's Microsoft.com or MSN. The other reason would be the browser's toolbar. The various icons and options steer the user to other Microsoft applications. Users become comfotable with using a particular application, and there's a good chance they will continue using the product, even as other/better applications vie for their loyalty and dollar.

Microsoft is very much like Rome of the internet: all roads lead to it.

terrorists LIKE bush heh

[Anonymous Coward]

dont you think the terrorists would actually be voting for bush? since he made so many new ones in iraq...

ActiveX for Gecko

[Anonymous Coward]

by Adam Lock

gewg_

Oh goodie

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean that the cola wars are over?

Re:Nitpicks

[Bastian]

1. Not all Mac users use OSS browsers. A good number of Mac users still use IE for OS X. (It doesn't get deleted when you upgrade to versions of OS X that don't include IE.) Also, Safari is not OSS.

2. There was more resistance to IE during the first round of browser wars when everyone was using Netscape and Netscape was just as aggressive about trying to extend web standards. (JavaScript, anyone?)

3. There's nothing stopping MS from re-releasing IE on the Mac. They've got it carbonized and everything, ready to go.

Why bother?

[zerin]

Why does M$ care how many people use IE? They have no monetary gain, so far as I can see, if their browser has a large amount of the "market" share. They are giving it away for free, even to Unix and Mac systems!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Complete rewrite of IE

[JPyObjC Dude]

The only way that those microsofties can make a browser that comes close to the flexibility, security and stability of Mozilla is to completely re-write IE. The only reason IE is fast is because they spent too much time optimizing their code trees eliminating their ability to debug the code.

IE will never be able to come close to the extensionability of Mozilla. In fact the only application that I see out there that comes close to Mozilla's extensions ability is Eclipse, but that's not a browser (yet...).

I've written some rather complex DHTML apps and IE has shown me many times that the underlying frameworks are a big bowl of spagetti. Sure it's fast but try to debug anything complex and forget it.

Porting my JS libs from IE to Mozilla was a painful experience but since doing that about 3 years ago, I've never looked back. I love the feeling of being able to report a bug to developers and acutually have it fixed. With microsoft, I have always been told to pay first then maybe somebody will read my report and ultimately throw the report into the garbage.

I still have to write apps that ultimately have to support IE 5.5 sp2+ but they are originally built on Mozilla (1.3+).

error.stack==happiness :]

No, they're not back.

[Spy der Mann]

Firefox has already won. It's just matter of time until the enemy's resources run out.

In any case... this will only encourage Microsoft to do actually the *RIGHT* thing: Incorporating the latest W3 standards into their browser (i.e. CSS 3).

This would be the _ONLY_ thing that could save them.

Re:Huh? Will longhorn become...

[Anonymous Coward]

Longporn?

Russ says

[toga98]

could you format an interview in a more annoying fashion.

Re:Nitpicks

[drsmithy]

There was more resistance to IE during the first round of browser wars when everyone was using Netscape and Netscape was just as aggressive about trying to extend web standards. (JavaScript, anyone?)

Heh, small bikkies. The greatest evil Netscape visited on the world was the BLINK tag.

Opera Veterans For The Truth!

[instarx]

You sound like a Swiftboat Veteran For The Truth nut.

OPERA STOLE MY SHOE!

Morning Sedition: AirAmericaRadio/

not quite similar

[Nicolay77]

We hackers tend to like fast methods of input.

Until I used Opera mouse gestures, the hacker way to do everything was the keyboard for that was the fastest way.

However, what Opera manages to do in an awesome way, is making the mouse more useful and faster than in any other software I used (except for games).

I've used the FF extensions, and while they allow me to use the mouse, there are but a few gestures only, and they don't have that feel of "faster than the keyboard" that Opera mouse gestures have.

In short, Opera leads with innovations and great implementation, to the details, while FF tries to copy them but fails.

However FF is opensource. YMMV.

Yes it is.

[zerin]

You can download it for free from their website including if you use Mac.

Re:What Opera does better than Firefox? Here you g

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the useless throbber in Firefox which gives no useful information?

The throbber isn't useless; it lets you know when a page in in the process of loading. And, as it halts when a page is loaded, it's not distracting.

You can't be talking about Opera, because it uses static text ads served by Google these days.

Don't tell me what I am talking about. Opera's text ads change on a periodic basis. It is this animation that I am referring to; it's distracting to have something changing in the corner of your eye when you are trying to read something.

[XMLHTTPRequest is] certainly non-standard.

That alone doesn't make it weird. It's implemented by Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Safari and the latest beta version of Opera. If the mere fact of being non-standard makes code "weird" and therefore justifiably unsupported, then you might as well throw away all Javascript in the world, as ECMA-262 and the DOM don't cover all the relevent areas and there are no supporting standards that do (of course, the DOM isn't a standard, but that's beside the point).

In contrast, Firefox is stripped down, and you have to spend a long time finding useful extensions.

Firefox is designed to have the features most casual users need. If you want something with all the bells and whistles included by default, then use one of the other options. Again, you are attacking Firefox instead of promoting Opera. The fact that Firefox is stripped down is a trait of Firefox, not a feature of Opera.

One thing is that Opera is innovative and introduces new features for Firefox to borrow.

Most browsers are innovative in one way or another. Again, you aren't showing how Opera differentiates itself.

Firefox decentralises this process by allowing anybody to extend the browser. If it turns out it's a feature most casual users want, then it'll get rolled into the main distribution. If not, at least it's an option for those that want it. With Opera, it's either put in for everyone, or left out.

Re:What Opera does better than Firefox? Here you g

[hkmwbz]

"Don't tell me what I am talking about. Opera's text ads change on a periodic basis. It is this animation that I am referring to; it's distracting to have something changing in the corner of your eye when you are trying to read something."

Wow, talk about grasping for straws :) But anyway, you seem to be referring to the useless throbber in Firefox again.

"Firefox decentralises this process by allowing anybody to extend the browser. If it turns out it's a feature most casual users want, then it'll get rolled into the main distribution. If not, at least it's an option for those that want it. With Opera, it's either put in for everyone, or left out."

You are completely wrong. Why do you Firefox zealots have to lie about Opera? Opera's default UI with Google ads is very small and easy to use. There are loads of advanced things you can do if you want to. But if you don't, you have an easy to use program right there, and loads of features at your finger tips, without them getting in the way.

Re: 'Best viewed using a computer!'

[Tiram]

Hah! Brilliant:D Do you mind if I steal it?

Re: 'Best viewed using a computer!'

[Ford Prefect]

Hah! Brilliant:D Do you mind if I steal it?

Course not. But please, for the sake of accuracy, if you use the 'web server' one, do ensure that it's actually powered by electricity in one form or another...

Re: 'Best viewed using a computer!'

[Tiram]

A generator powered by a hamster-driven wheel counts, right?

Compressed Binary Sizes

[eugene ts wong]

If you compile it yourself (i.e. you like to do that) then it's still small and relies on the shared library versions of gtk2 and font stuff and therefore you get the same size stuff. If that made any sense let me know.

Well, I took a look at the compressed binaries since I ended up installing them. eugene@ew eugene $ ls -l /usr/portage/packages/All/mozilla-*

• -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 17783404 Oct 10 09:17 /usr/portage/packages/All/mozilla-1.7.2-r1.tbz2
• -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8719328 Oct 12 02:00 /usr/portage/packages/All/mozilla-firefox-0.9.3.tb z2
• -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 18481 Oct 8 21:03 /usr/portage/packages/All/mozilla-launcher-1.16.tb z2

So it looks like neither Firefox nor Mozilla are even coming close to Opera. Opera is as featureful as Mozilla, except for maybe the HTML editor, yet is *much* smaller than Firefox, yet still manages to look the same on all distributions.

There really is no comparison.

Re:What Opera does better than Firefox? Here you g

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, talk about grasping for straws :)

WTF are you talking about? It's a well-established HCI principle that things changing in the corner of your eye when you are trying to read something is distracting.

But anyway, you seem to be referring to the useless throbber in Firefox again.

Look, please read what I wrote before replying nonsensically. The throbber stops when the page has finished loading.

You are completely wrong.

Okay, which bit was wrong? Are you saying that people other than the main Firefox devs cannot write extensions? Are you saying that Features most casual users want aren't rolled into Firefox? Are you saying that extensions aren't options for people who want them? Are you saying that Opera has an extension system like that of Firefox?

Why do you Firefox zealots have to lie about Opera?

Actually, I only use Firefox some of the time. It's you Opera fans that keep bringing Firefox up. And I fail to see where I have lied about Opera.

Opera's default UI with Google ads is very small and easy to use.

The default UI has four bars above the page, cutting down the vertical space significantly, and a sidebar that reduces horizontal space.

There are loads of advanced things you can do if you want to.

Where did I say otherwise?

But if you don't, you have an easy to use program right there, and loads of features at your finger tips, without them getting in the way.

Where did I say otherwise? I'm just asking what the hell Opera does that is so special, and I still haven't got an answer. Everything you list about Opera is also done by other browsers. You are the one grasping at straws; vague handwaving about it being a nice package isn't very convincing if you can't actually list anything specific.

Re:What Opera does better than Firefox? Here you g

[hkmwbz]

"WTF are you talking about? It's a well-established HCI principle that things changing in the corner of your eye when you are trying to read something is distracting."

I've never noticed that it changes while I'm viewing a page. Then again, I never notice the ads anyway.

"The default UI has four bars above the page, cutting down the vertical space significantly, and a sidebar that reduces horizontal space."

There's always plenty of horizontal space. It goes to waste with most pages. As for vertical space, it's not much worse than Firefox. Firefox has a personal bar too, and a status bar in addition to that. The ads are there because there should be an incentive to buy Opera you know.

"'m just asking what the hell Opera does that is so special, and I still haven't got an answer.

Pay attention. I answered this ages ago:

The way everything is put together!

Opera is an integrated package, and everything is created to fit smoothly together. Features work together, complementing each other, working together, working well. And it works without having to build your own browser!

In contrast, Firefox is stripped down, and you have to spend a long time finding useful extensions. Problem is, they don't fit very well together, or at least not as smoothly as Opera, and they tend to be rather buggy, and you get problems when upgrading...

Opera is just a smoother ride. No effort, everything is there, ready to use.

To sum up: It's not just about the features. Any idiot can throw togeter a bunch of random features. And that's what you do in Firefox. Extensions can conflict with each other, and they are created by different people with different goals. In Opera, everything is a tightly integrated package, ready to use when installed. That's what it does better. Everything works together!

Oh, and Opera renders Slashdot correctly and goes back instantly instead of reloading the page :)

Firefox – The Intifada Reloaded?

[superyooser]

Yes, I did just compare Microsoft to Israel and Mozilla to Palestine.

I hope you are not on Mozilla's PR team. Man oh man!

If you want to be less controversial next time, you could make comparisons between the Nazis, 9-11 victims, and gay baby seals. And you are clueless as to why your freaks doubled on October 8? (Note to others: I am not one.) You recklessly tromped into THE MOST explosive, political/religious clash in the world. Did you honestly think that you were going to escape from that comment without any bad blood?

You should be aware that Palestine (the supposed Arab country) does not exist. I don't know how old you are, but the propagandist concept that such an Arab state had existed was invented by Yasser Arafat (a native of Cairo, Egypt) in 1964 in order to destroy the relatively new Jewish state of Israel. For a primer on the conflict, see History in a Nutshell (Flash animations).

So if Mozilla = Palestine, then Mozilla is nothing but a myth -- and a very evil and destructive one, at that.

Palestine is vaporware; Mozilla is not.

Konqueror (all of KDE) has mouse gestures too...

[leonbrooks]

...and since Mac people are big on UI, I'd be startled if Safari has no way of achieving the same thing.