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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'."
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.
Just watch Safari & Firefox development and imitate the functionality. Joe User then has no compelling reason to switch.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
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.
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
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.
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.
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...
do() || do_not();
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.
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
news.com.com.com.com.com
:-/ unless it gets as good as a real d/l manager, it is more of a hassle!
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
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.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
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.
I don't need a signature.
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.
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
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...
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.
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...
On one of my old systems, Opera happened to be the only browser light/fast enough to run reasonably on that system.
:( It crashed frequently, even more often than IE on my Windows boxes.
My main dislike of it? It was unstable as hell.
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*.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
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.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
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.
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...
By reading this sig, you are now pwnd.
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.
evil is as evil does
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!
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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
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=04/10/08/14352
0 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!
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;