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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'."
When my company started putting "Best Viewed in Firefox/Mozilla" on the intranet . I knew that the browser wars are over .
.NET and Java) ... but I suspect Mozilla's not as slow as Java in responding , especially when it's Microsoft
Microsoft may be able to do something however late it is (see
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
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?
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
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
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?
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.
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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."
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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>
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.
Decode these
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.
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?
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Because IE isn't standards-compliant and barfs on standards-compliant pages very often.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
"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...
This is where the serious fun begins.
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.
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