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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'."
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....
Well it's about time- we were damn close to having actual web standards. Glad we dodged that bullet.
yeah, ok.
Opera's Not Free
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
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
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
"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!
There: Something at a specific location.
Their: Owned by someone.
Please make sure your english compiles.
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.
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
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();
Well, they are not enabled by default, but gestures can be added to Firefox: http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/showlist.php? category=Mouse%20Gestures
Give life
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.
Holy cow! Microsoft is going to start using agressive tactics? How will we ever survive?
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?
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
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
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.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
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."
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
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
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.
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.
-----
Make Love not [Browser] War!
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?
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
It may be gratis, but it's not libre.
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.
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.
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?
Because IE isn't standards-compliant and barfs on standards-compliant pages very often.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
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.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Now watch this C: drive.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
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.
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
End main.html
Begin topframe.html
End topframe.html
Begin bottomframe.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
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
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?