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AOL Plans A Standalone Browser
Patik writes "America Online is creating its own standalone browser, aimed at employees who cannot install AOL software at their workstations. The browser will be based on Internet Explorer but will include other features such as tabbed browsing that displays a thumbnail of the page as you pass your cursor over it. The browser will also integrate AOL's media player and will be able to access AOL-only content."
Would somebody please explain how AOL thinks users who can't install the full AOL client on their workstations thanks to sysadmin-imposed policies will be able to get the AOL Browser installed? Whatever policy stands against the AOL client will most likely shoot down this AOL Browser too. PHBs don't want people playing on the Internet during company time, and people are going to be hard pressed to show a business-reason to be accessing the AOL-exclusive entertainment content on company time and resources.
This seems like at face value a project that won't reach its target audience and therefore is doomed to failure.
KEWL DUDE
AOL had a browser. In fact, they had a whole browser company. They chose to run it into the ground, like seemingly everything else they've touched. (Proper respect for at least funding Mozilla development, though)
Now they plan to introduce a bloated IE shell (of which there are already several superior ones) with the intent of allowing their customers access to AOL's premium content. First of all, there is nothing left on AOL that the rest of the world would be particularly interested in. The global, public Internet has already won resoundingly against AOL's private little sanitized domain.
And then they finish off with this bit of idiocy:
Clearly offerring another program to install will solve the "people can't install our software" problem.
Why doesn't AOL at least work on improving their horrible web portal if they're so keen on getting people to access their worthless content? Oh that's right, they did... they made it all flash. How delightfully MODERN!
What a worthless company. I bed Ted Turner still shits his pants daily thinking of the mistake he made merging with them. Everything AOL touches turns to shit.
The concept seems to be taking a bad Internet Provider and intergrating it with a bad Internet browser. Will probably be successful.
This is another way of starting a sig with this and ending it with that.
After reading the article, I still don't understand how this is going to help people install the AOL branded special version of IE onto a companies machine. Instead of the AOL software, they still have to install the browser? I doubt that many of the corporate IT guys are going to be willing to install something with AOL in its title on a company machine.
On sticking with an IE based browser, Pearce-Parkins said, "The company stuck with IE so users won't have to make "a leap of faith." Good idea in concept, but honestly I don't believe the users would ever notice there would be a difference between browsers, so why not go with something that would probably be easier to work with?
Guess I better hold out my judgment until the browser gets on the scene, but AOL's massive content library would do well for its subscribers if it wasn't solely tied to their Client.
Stormy
http://www.stormyshippy.com/
Good move. Make a brower for employees who can install AOL stuff on their computers out of the most vulnerable browser out there. Oh yea, system administrators are going to love this!
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
will include other features such as tabbed browsing
Now even AOL will have a better browser than Microsoft.
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This is the best joke that I've heard all week. A company that owned Netscape and who manged to run it into the ground is planning on bringing out an IE variant browser.
Why don't they just burn money - it would cut out the middle man.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
Why is everyone assuming that they are not going to use mozilla? We have had a half dozen stories about AOL projects over the last couple weeks, and everyone on slashdot is acting like they are all describing completely independent projects (and thus a waste of duplicate effort), when it seems to me the stories are the product a bunch of blind reporters feeling-up the same elephant.
We already know that AOL has worked to integrate the IE engine into Netscape, has reworked the winamp core into a new AMP player using XUL for the interface, and implemented an AIM client in XUL. That appears to me to be a very consistent plan to integrate all their products / acquisitions into a new internet suite, based on Mozilla XUL.
Their decision to use IE makes perfect sense - it is the best way to ensure compatibility with as many sites as possible, and I would argue that most of the security problems that IE has are how the surrounding shell handles files/scripts/plugins - not the core itself. Lastly as firefox becomes more popular and more sites render correct in both IE and Firefox, they can swap engines out without the users noticing as much as they would now.
I won't comment on whether this will help AOL, or whether people will go for it, but it certainly does appear to be part of a well thought out plan, not a bunch of random uncoordinated actions.
we finally have identified which company Dilbert was modeled upon... :-)
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First impressions:
- it is a lot more reponsive than straight IE. The interface could best be described as "crisp"
- The thumbnails are extremely useful. Previews for tabs are a godsend when you have 15+ tabs open
- The zoom feature is amazing. Smooth scaling and fine detail.
- AOL seems to have done something to fix the broken caching in IE.
Having said that, there are still some problems- Form elements aren't fully useable when zoomed. Selects are a real bitch: completely unuseable at any zoom.
- It seems to share a namespace with other instances of IE. Named popups on the same site will cross post between the AOL browser and Explorer.
I find it rather funny that everyone here is slamming AOL for what appears to be well designed and implemented piece of software. The choice of the rendering component might be questionable, but for many people, Internet Exporer is a necessary evil. It's possible the interface is designed to be modular enough to swap Gecko in easily. My hope is that the Mozilla/Firefox devel teams take a good look at this browser without thier AOL prejudices getting in the way. There are a lot of good features to "steal" for Firefox 1.2.The Revolution. Now available as a convienent six tape series from PBS.