Slashdot Mirror
History of Netscape and Mozilla
Sabah Arif writes "Netscape was there at the beginning of the internet boom. In 1996, the company controlled 90 percent of the browser market, but now its usershare is in the single digits. The spawn of Netscape, Firefox, has never been more popular, and is poised to beat Microsoft in the browser market. Read the history of Netscape and Mozilla at MLAgazine."
Come on "editors"!
The spawn of Netscape, Firefox, has never been more popular, and is poised to beat Microsoft in the browser market.
I'm a firefox fanatic, it's without doubt the superior browser. But spouting such mindless rubbish as that comment doesn't do anyone any good. In my mind 'Poised to beat' would be when Firefox is at 49% browser share, not the less than 10% (compared to 80%+ for IE). Keep the propaganda out of news items please, and let Firefox promote itself by simply being the better browser.
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
I remember when I made the switch from Netscape 4 to IE 5. I resisted IE for many years, but at some point it just became evident that Internet Explorer was a superior product in almost every way.
Once Foxfire became stable and usable I switched to it, and some time later it became Firefox. So far it's the best browsing experience I've had and the extentions published for it make it endlessly expandable.
I think there will always be a segment of the market that is satisfied with whatever does the minimum possible to get the job done, but as we see Firefox's market share rise we know that some people will take the time to upgrade to the superior browser.
"There's companies that are just so cool that you just can't even deal with it," - Bill Gates, about Google
how about taking more market share away from IE by making a browser baed on apple safari.
webcore they allow to freely download so anybody could download that and work on a better browser. and if the current lgpl violations can be worked out it could make yet another very good alternative to IE so together firefox netscape mozilla safari and other webcore browsers could take IE market share
> Firefox, has never been more popular, and is poised to beat Microsoft in the browser market.
Come on, folks, I'm a rabid Firefox fan and even *I* know this kind of rhetoric doesn't belong on the front page...
The second most popular browser available today, Firefox, is a direct descendant of the Mosaic Netscape browser released in 1994. The product was created by NCSA refugees, Jim Clark and Jim Andresson. Together, they revolutionized the internet, making it synonymous with the world wide web.
NCSA Mosaic was the first popular, graphical browser available to personal computer users. Before, the internet and its resources were primarily only available to those in academia and other research institutions. Eventually, online providers began to offer internet access in addition to their proprietary networks, and HTML took off. The first browsers available to the public were very primitive, typically only capable of rendering simple text and hyperlinks. The University of Illinois, at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, developed the Mosaic browser. It was innovative because it was capable of rendering images, and itself had a graphical interface. By 1993, it was the dominant force on the internet. It had almost complete dominance over the internet, and was widely applauded for its quality.
Other people and companies wanted in on the game. Jim Andresson, developer of Mosaic for UNIX, and Jim Clark left the NCSA to found Mosaic Communications on April 4, 1994. Capitalizing on the former student's familiarity of the Mosaic browser, Mosaic Communications released its first browser months later. Its name was Netscape. Almost instantly, it became more popular than Mosaic, mostly because of bundling deals with internet service providers. Navigator included many new features not found in Mosaic. The most popular one was the ability to display pages as they download. Unlike most other browsers, a user did not have to wait for the entire page to download before it was usable. The NCSA took issue with the name Mosaic Communications, and the company was renamed Netscape Communications, and the browser was renamed Navigator.
A year later, Netscape was short on funds, and decided to go public with its initial stock price at $28. On its IPO, the stock price rose to $75, an unheard of leap in the software business. Netscape continued to gain marketshare, and controlled %90 of the browser market in mid-1995.
Version 2 of Netscape included a plethora of new features, many of them haphazardly implemented. The new version included support for cookies, frames and a new email client. Netscape 2 grew even faster than the first version, and helped Netscape double its revenues every quarter in 1995.
Navigator was evolving. It had added many new features and tags that were not available on any other browser (though eventually, most of these tags would be adopted the W3C), which made it difficult for other browsers to coexist with Netscape. As its marketshare and revunes grew, so to did the company's scope. Netscape began developing a product called Constellation. Constellation would allow a user to access files from a desktop anywhere on a network. It was to make the operating system an irrelevant component on the desktop computer.
Microsoft felt threatened by Netscape's continued growth, especially its assertion that the browser would replace the operating system as the most important software on a computer. Several executives visited the Netscape campus in August of 1995, and made a proposal. Netscape would cease all development for their Windows version of Navigator, but would face no competition from Microsoft on other platforms. The company refused, and Microsoft began developing a new web browser.
Unable to develop their own web browser so quickly, Microsoft turned to Spyglass, who had licensed Mosaic's source code from the NCSA. Microsoft would give Mosaic a monthly payment, and a percentage of the revenues the browser generated. Using Mosaic code, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 1.0 on August 1995 as part of the Internet Jumpstart pack for Windows 95. The new browser was widely derided for being so primitive and clumsy. It was little m
Who's checking facts around here? Firefox kills--I use it exclusively--but there's no way it's "poised to beat (IE)." Do you know what "poised" even means?
The spawn of Netscape, Firefox, has never been more popular, and is poised to beat Microsoft in the browser market.
Christ, is it just me or does Taco no longer speak English? I've read this sentence three times and I don't know what it means yet. Apparently the "spawn of" something known as "Netscape, Firefox" is somehow poised to compete. Total jibberish.
90% 85% 95% .. doesn't matter. The market share IE enjoys in no way reflective of it's quality. I know a bunch of supply-sidings free market zealots on slashdot will moan about it, "Let the market decide which is the better *product*." If that were the case here, IE would have a 1% share of the browser market.
Alas, we live in the twilight zone where Microsoft gives away it's flagship product and that's called Capitalism!
The product was created by NCSA refugees, Jim Clark and Jim Andresson.
This is the second sentence - after which I stopped reading. Jim Clark an NCSA refugee?? Jim Andresson??
The only NCSA refugee here is Marc Andreessen. Jim Clark is the founder of SGI and the money behind Netscape. If they can't get this simple things straight...
Folks, the score is Team A 95, Team B 3. It looks like Team B is poised to finally beat Team A. What a game! What a game!
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
They're not commas, they're semi-shatners.
An open source database from Germany carried the name Firefox, so the project was renamed for the last time. It was called Firefox.
Replace the first 'Firefox' with 'Firebird' and everything's fine. Also, they should make their pictures smaller.
Stefano
W3 shows IE at 65%, Opera at 2%, Firefox at 25%, Mozilla at 3.5%, and Netscape at 1%. While this is the lowest IE has every been, its decreasing slowly.
This is my last post.
[6th Estate]
Is firefox ready to take the browsing crown ?
Not quite I say.. there's unfortunately still a few things holding it back. As I see it, the following hold FF back from being the dominant browser (note: not all these are things that are FF/Mozilla Fndations' fault).
IE is the default browser in all windows distros, unfortunately, this means IE has a defacto advantage, and a huge one at that, as many people dont even know the alternative exists.
On the same note: Many people dont know about FF. Things like spread firefox and word of mouth, and positive press are helping this problem in a big way. Now even some of my non-tech savvy friends proclaim "I'll never touch explorer again, I love the 'Fox". Firefox has become enough of a better browser that they see that as superior.
Stubborn IT policies that refuse to consider new applications, namely a new default browser for companies. I know my school has finally seen the light and included FF as an option on the default install on all publicly available computers. But it's still not on the desktop, hidden away in the programs menu. We need the make it just as easy to launch FF as to launch IE (I know a default install of FF puts a desktop icon there, but we need to get IT departments to leave it there).
The extremely techincally illiterate who hold corporate power. That is, those upper level managers who have only ever known IE, and are terrified to use anything else because of those viruses and worms they keep hearing about. If they're intelligent, they'll listen to smart IT advice, however, we know how often upper management likes to think they know best outside their area.
I'm sure there are areas that i've missed, but these are some of the problem's facing down the 'Fox as I see it.
I was using Netscape till Version 4. Then I switched to IE and was using it till the middle of last year, when I found Firefox. So now it's Firefox 99% of the time. Even when I was using IE, I faithfully downloaded all new versions of Netscape till version 7. When even that version did a poor job of rendering wepages with css (in my opinion), I gave it up altogether.
I first thought %90 was a kind of funny typo to be on the front page of slashdot. But when I started to RTFA I noticed this was copied from there, and stoped reading it. I just cant take someone who confuses where to put the % symbol with where the $ symbol should be seriously. :oP
Sindri Traustason.
Second sentence: "The product was created by NCSA refugees, Jim Clark and Jim Andresson." Who the heck is Jim Andresson?
Then the article goes on to be filled with gems like: "Several months later, NGLayout, renamed Gecko, was released several months later, but a browser based on it would not be released to the public for years, though there were publicly available betas."
And my favorite: "An open source database from Germany carried the name Firefox, so the project was renamed for the last time. It was called Firefox."
> The product was created by NCSA refugees, Jim Clark and Jim Andresson.
No, it was Jim Clark and Marc Andresson.
Netscape had a great lead in 1996 but when IE 4.0 came out, with its far superior Java scripting capabilities, Netscape was junk. IE 5.0 only furthered that gap. And whatever happened to Netscape 5? Hmmm.
Bundling aside, IE crushed Netscape because IE was the better browser.
This is my sig.
The product was created by NCSA refugees, Jim Clark and Jim Andresson.
I believe that's supposed to be 'Marc Andresson', fact-checkers/reporters at MLAgazine. Sheesh.
It was called Phoenix, not FoxFire! Also, marketshare isn't really an accurate term. Maybe with Opera, and iCab (which refuses to die) you can talk about a market. Personally, I'd be releived if Firefox takes over from Linux as the 'posterchild' of free software. Linux tends to confuse Joe User as to what Open Source is all about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_bloc
My website's percentages (I would say a somewhat stereotype independent website):
.5% every month), so that kind of confuses me. Either way, IE is going way down, and Mozilla/FireFox are going up.
January 2005:
MS Internet Explorer 95.9 %
Netscape 1.8 %
Mozilla 1 %
Opera 0.4 %
Safari 0.4 %
February 2005:
MS Internet Explorer 92.5 %
Mozilla 4.1 %
Netscape1.4 %
Safari 0.8 %
Opera 0.5 %
March 2005:
MS Internet Explorer 90.9 %
Mozilla 2.7 %
FireFox 2.1 %
Netscape 1.4 %
My guess is that my host just updated awstats so that firefox and mozilla are seperated. It does list FireBird (less than
So.. you would prefer:
The spawn of Netscape and Firefox and has never been more popular and and is poised
that article sucked ass, and made me pine for the days of... well... pine. gopher never took me to badly-written malfactual articles on crap i and ten-thousand other slashdot readers already knew more about than the authors. i also find it a bit suspect that web browsers were what made the internet "big shit". certainly the newly graphical nature of the web played a role, but from my perspective (rural southeast america circa mid-summer mid-nineties), it was simply the appearance of national ISP's with toll-free dialup that was the catalyst - that is, it's the last mile, silly. signal-to-noise ratio never recovered from AOL coming on the net. indirectly, they should take the blame for the heinous use of language and complete lack of content in the above-referenced article. back to silly flash movies for me.
"The spawn of Netscape, Firefox, has never been more popular, and is poised to beat Microsoft in the browser market." What "market"????? Firefox is free. People do not "go to market" to burchase free stuff.
The name changes Mozilla has gone through are so confusing even the author cannot properly keep track of them. The database was called Firebird. One good thing to come out of all the messing was they made sure to carefully isolate all the branding information and make tools like Firesomething possible, allowing users to personalise their browser.
hopefully they will read what we have commented over here and brush up on their research and editing staff. I do not need to point out every mistake, most of you have caught them already in the ~50 comments posted for this article. But whoa momma there are many.
the cool thing is, most of us that commented actually RTFA - maybe M-LAG-azine did not think they would have anyone read it, just hit the site, see it was full of holes and start clicking some ads or without readers the contents of the article would not have to be accurate?
It is a shame, they are touting themselves as 'a site devoted to the history of personal computing' - I guess you don't have to have your facts straight, just 'devoted' to putting flawed history writeups. I'm scared to check out their sister site 'Macreate'.
do you have shinyfeet?
NetworkMirror
It's only been 10 years. They didn't have American History class in schools at the time the Declaration of Independance was being signed nor did they have Ancient History in schools at the time the pyramids were being built.
If you stop spouting mindless propaganda, it just leaves their mindless rubbish to try and dominate "developer mindshare". And, oh look, there's those bloody TCO adverts on virtually *every* techsite I go to. The MS marketing budget must be keeping the commercial net *afloat*.
.NET marketing producing a "faster", "better" version. And I see some are trumpeting the change-over from Bitkeeper to GIT as an example of OSS "failure". McVoy has lost out big-time and he *knows* it, hence his bitter flailings at linux. But hey, temporary losses for future gains, eh?
TFF Firefox and the anti-flash plugin.
I agree you should pick your battlegrounds wisely and leave nothing for the enemy to pick at. Witness the petstore project fiasco for java, where an un-tuned app meant for mere newbie step-up was turned against Java by
Marketing: it's a dirty job but someone's got to do it. O'wise, how do people know you've built a better mousetrap?
h
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
As a number of posters have noted, the article is riddled with errors (Jim???), and doesn't say much that isn't common sense. However the conjecture about Firefox taking over the market is only conjecture.
I do think firefox has a chance of doing big things, but it's not going to do it by itself. Firefox still needs our help.
Tomorrow I am going to my brother's house to set up his new computer for his daughter who will take that computer to college this fall. As per normal I will spend about 30 minutes getting it set up, and then about another hour ensuring it has firefox, and thunderbird installed and prominently in the quick launch tray, and also configured for fast startup (always in memory after first use).
Additionally I will expunge all visible references to IE and Outlook (on the START menu, in the Programs menu, etc.) and ensure his default clients are set to firefox and thunderbird.
Fortunately I don't have to give any tutorial on firefox and its features as I've already set up his other computer previously and he now doesn't even really remember how to fire up IE.... so much the better. I also switched out any software that overrides the default browser setting (specifically McAffee).
For all slashdotters, this is one contribution we can make above and beyond posts in this forum. (Lots of good posts and info in this forum.... my brother hasn't a clue what slashdot is, nor does he care -- probably the attitude of 99%++ of the consumer demographic.) Let's all give firefox the additional nudge -- it couldn't hurt.
Take another cup of coffee. His English is grammatically correct, but the content is a ridiculous exageration that its hard to make sense out of it.
I say fuck MLMagasine, use Wikipedia for Netscape's history and FlexBeta's article for Firefox history, since they at least have the facts, with a per-version history to boot
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
call me a hypocrite for not crafting this comment so carefully. But I put a lot more thought into writing story summaries.
We would not be anywhere near where we are today without the numerous innovations of Netscape 2.0.
(On a side note, the "text" in these images prior to posting is very unreadable most of the time.)
You're brain is a lot better functioning than Sabah Arif, who writes about a web browser working on top of BIOS- What? I think he means Phoenix technologies which makes BIOS firmware, but never a web browser. I used to think brand names were unimportant, but now I think it does actually make sense for companies like PalmOne to spend millions rebranding. Perhaps its all about mindshare.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_bloc
The Mozilla Foundation
l a.asp
The Mozilla Foundation was created in July 2003 when AOL laid off the employees involved in the Mozilla open-source browser team.
-http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_mozil
That article never said anything about that...
I always hated netscape, and their communicator was Bloatware...
However Mozilla is interesting, and Firefox is fantastic.
The moral of the story is the software has to be useable and better than what is already out there...IE was better for a long time...until Firefox came out anyway.
But I am old school...I used IBrowse on my Amiga back in 1994.
Didn't Netscape attempt to rewrite their browser in Java? If so, that's an important part of the story.
The article claims that Netscape was about to go bankrupt just before being purchased by AOL. Given the millions raised by going public this seems unlikely.
IMHO, one of the main reasons why Netscape failed was its management (or lack thereof). I have no idea why this never, ever gets covered, but you see this throughout not only the demise of Netscape, but also the software as well. This REALLY ought to be studied more, as it's a classic case on what not to do with software projects.
One key problem (from what I've heard, and seen myself) is that no one was in charge of the various sections of code. Usually, with well run organizations, there is Someone Responsible for any given section of code. If something goes wrong, it's that person who's at fault, and is responsible seeing that it's fixed.
From what I'm told by people who worked there, that wasn't the case. Anybody could check-out and change anything they wanted. The original author of the code had no say in the matter. And when asked to make changed to the code later on, he would throw up his hands and say "Whoa - that's not my code anymore". This is a natural response in this environment, so I'm not surprised that the original Netscape code was so bloated when it was first released.
One guy I knew said that he had to have his manager step in, and make certain that if anybody mucked with what he was implementing, that that person would be fired.
This is not way to run a serious Engineering Organization. And I have reason to believe that this is true, having seen some of the later work that these managers have done.
The really funny thing is, the most noted V.C. organization in Silicon Valley (K.P) is still really enamoured by this so-called "management". So much so, that they push the former managers off on their newest hot startups. And, to show that I'm not just making this up, a former Netscape VP of Engineering is at one of KP's startups in San Jose. From what I hear, morale has plummeted since he joined last fall.
"Additionally I will expunge all visible references to IE and Outlook (on the START menu, in the Programs menu, etc.) and ensure his default clients are set to firefox and thunderbird."
Good work, OSS thought policeman!
The time, 1996, referred to by the article was a time when a lot of people working at Netscape were resting on their laurels and sure that they would always have dominant market share. Many (not all, but enough to hurt) of the original Netscape millionares were taking it easy. They drove their expensive new cars to the office and spent their day sneering at IE and, most destructively, at the legions of new employees Netscape was hiring. They should have spent their time being great mentors for the new people in order to continue the energetic innovation that fueled their initial success.
The first paragraph of the article says that Netscape was created by "Jim Clark and Jim Andresson" - but the second fellow's name is Marc. I stopped reading at that point.
promising the online service provider free ad space on the Windows desktop in exchange for using the Internet Explorer rendering engine. So not only did I shell out a few hundred for a license, Theyre also using my work space for corporate sponsorship. Way to go Microsoft!!
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
Right, and Webcore isn't platform specific and does not use MacOSX specific features that ain't replicated anywhere else, which means that it'll be easy to port Safari to W32 machines...
I don't think we'll see this kind of innovation come from within the Mozilla Foundation, but a version of Firefox that could switch between Gecko and Webcore would sure be neato (ala Netscape 8's choice between Gecko and IE). And especially useful for web developers.
And I don't think it'd be as difficult as you imply...
One route: Nokia ported WebCore to the GTK toolkit, and GTK is available for Windows (see Gimp, Gaim, etc.). I don't think anyone is actively working on GTK Webcore though.
Another route: Webcore's original parent - KHTML - is tied to the QT toolkit (both Apple Webcore and the GTK Webcore use QT-ish compatibility layers called KWIQ). It was recently announced that the next release of QT will include a GPL version for Windows.
So, who the hell knows.
aWeb was better than iBrowse. None of that blasted MUI stuff from Stuntz to slow down the browser.
*pushes you off the bridge*
(yes, joke)
The article says that Netscape was founded by Jim Clark and Jim Andresson (" The product was created by NCSA refugees, Jim Clark and Jim Andresson. Together, they revolutionized the internet, making it synonymous with the world wide web.").
I could be horribly mistaken, but wasn't it Mark Andreesen? Are was there both a Jim Andresson and a Mark Andreesen?
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
http://postnuke.com/">
I'll keep my Gecko based browsers, thanks. I don't trust that idiot with delusions of Godhood that runs Apple.
Wow, you mean there are less than 10 users of Netscape Navigator?
Sure there is. Try reading this:
http://www.mozilla.org/cvs.html
The World is Yours.
One good thing to come out of all the messing was they made sure to carefully isolate all the branding information and make tools like Firesomething possible, allowing users to personalise their browser.
They should just get a trademark on the word "Fire". If that's not possible, it should be quite easy to get a patent on Fire. After the patent search comes up empty, the patent office will just rubber-stamp their application.
OK so the poster was incorrect about the grammar of the sentence. But how does a direct quote in the /. summary get labeled as offtopic?
I now wish I did not use up my mod points in a previous article.
Here's the Phoenix FirstWare Connect browser that runs on top of Phoenix BIOS.
pseudo-mod: "+1 Funny/Insightful, Appropriate Sarcasm"
The spawn of Netscape, Firefox, has never been more popular, and is poised to beat Microsoft in the browser market.
Now I use Firefox but statements like this are as bad as statements by Microsoft about security of Linux.
and if i remember correctly, the aol/windows agreement predates aol buying netscape by years and years
E-mail from Microsoft's Charles Fitzgerald to MS execs on Novell/MS Java meeting
This is one of the documents recently unsealed in the legal case between Sun Microsystems Inc. and Microsoft Corp. over whether Microsoft behaved in an anti-competitive fashion in its handling of Java.
From: Charles Fitzgerald
Sent: Thursday, July 03, 1997 6:01 PM
To: Bill Gates; Paul Maritz; Jim Allchin; Bob Muglia
Cc: Russ Arun; David Cole; John Ludwig
Subject: Novell and Java
"[...] Needless to say, we asked why they were talking to us. They claim to be frustrated with the JavaSoft's lack of speed, resource limits and the "butthead factor" of their engineers. [...]"
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Netscape and Apple Announce Plans to Develop Netscape Navigator for Apple's Cyberdog
Netscape To Support Apple's OpenDoc, Cyberdog Technologies; Apple Chooses Netscape Navigator for Cyberdog
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., CUPERTINO, Calif.--Aug. 27, 1996--Apple Computer, Inc. and Netscape Communications Corporation today announced that they have signed an agreement for Netscape to develop a new version of Netscape Navigator that supports Cyberdog, Apple's Internet suite, and OpenDoc, the open component architecture. To be called Netscape Navigator for Cyberdog, Netscape will develop a custom component developed specifically for the Apple Cyberdog Internet suite.
In addition, Apple will distribute Netscape Navigator for Cyberdog with its Mac OS, as the default browsing component for Cyberdog. Apple's plans also call for the product to be incorporated with the Mac OS in Apple computers.
"With this agreement, Netscape has demonstrated the strength of its support for Apple's Cyberdog Internet suite and the industry-standard OpenDoc component architecture," said Larry Tesler, vice president of Apple's AppleNet division. "With Cyberdog and other initiatives, Apple has been incorporating Internet access directly into the OS and Macintosh applications, so that Internet access is user-content and experience driven, rather than accessible only through stand-alone browsers."
"Today's announcement that Apple and Netscape will work together to offer Netscape Navigator for Cyberdog, and plans for its future incorporation into the Mac OS and other OpenDoc-compatible applications, will provide users a leading Internet client that is optimized for the Macintosh environment," said Mike Homer, senior vice president of marketing at Netscape. "Macintosh users will be able to leverage both the advantages of an easy-to-use environment and the leading-edge features of Netscape Navigator."
Cyberdog: Incorporating Internet Access into the OS
Cyberdog is a full-featured Internet/intranet suite of products with a common look and feel. With Cyberdog, one application can be used to access information on the Internet, intranet and local area AppleTalk or AppleShare networks. Cyberdog also includes many built-in data-types such as for GIF and JPEG files and QuickTime movies.
Cyberdog, one application can be used to access information on the Internet, intranet and local area AppleTalk or AppleShare networks. Cyberdog also includes many built-in data-types such as for GIF and JPEG files and QuickTime movies.
Cyberdog is tightly integrated with the Mac OS. For example, a user can take a Cyberitem (an icon that represents a universal resource locator, or URL) in the web browser and drag it to the Finder. This Cyberitem can then be used to access that particular resource directly from the desktop. Independent developers can extend Cyberdog by building their own OpenDoc components.
Netscape Navigator for Cyberdog will allow users to embed browsing capabilities in other OpenDoc-compatible applications. For example, using an OpenDoc-supported word processor such as ClarisWorks or Corel's WordPerfect, a computer user would be able to incorporate live links to web sites that would provide continuously updated information. In addition, Netscape Navigator for Cyberdog will be customized to work with the Cyberdog suite, providing seamless integration through features and look and feel.
OpenDoc
OpenDoc is a multiplatform, component software architecture that enables developers to evolve current applications into component software or to create new component software applications. OpenDoc software will run on the Mac OS, as well as Windows, Windows NT, OS/2 and AIX systems. With software enabled by OpenDoc, users will be able
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
The following announcement was made 6 a.m. PST Monday, December 4, 1995.
Key points of this release are:
* Sun and Netscape announce JavaScript, an object-oriented scripting language based on the Java programming language. [THAT IS A LIE: JavaScript is NOT based on Java. They are quite different, especially when you consider their object models, which are as different as day and night, and quite incompatible.]
* 28 leading technology companies endorse JavaScript, including Oracle, Sybase, Digital Equipment, H-P and IBM.
* JavaScript is aimed at making it easier for non-programmers to create web pages that employ Java applets, without having to learn how to program in Java. This is expected to bring a new level of interactivity and multimedia capabilities to the Internet and corporate Intranets.
* Netscape and Sun plan to submit JavaScript to industry consortiums as a proposed open standard. [But not Java!]
NETSCAPE AND SUN ANNOUNCE JAVASCRIPT(TM), THE OPEN, CROSS-PLATFORM OBJECT SCRIPTING LANGUAGE FOR ENTERPRISE NETWORKS AND THE INTERNET
28 Industry-Leading Companies Have Expressed Their Endorsement of JavaScript(TM) As A Complement To Java(TM) For Easy Online Application Development
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (December 4, 1995) -- Netscape Communications Corporation (NASDAQ: NSCP) and Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ:SUNW), today announced [the fact that Netscape renamed their pre-existing language called "LiveScript" that had nothing to do with Java to the misleading name] JavaScript(TM), an open, cross-platform object scripting language for the creation and customization of applications on enterprise networks and the Internet. The JavaScript language complements [but otherwise has nothing in common with] Java(TM), Sun's industry-leading object-oriented, cross-platform programming language. The initial version of JavaScript is available now as part of the beta version of Netscape Navigator(TM) 2.0, which is currently available for downloading from Netscape's web site.
In addition, 28 industry-leading companies, including America Online, Inc., Apple Computer, Inc., Architext Software, Attachmate Corporation, AT&T, Borland International, Brio Technology, Inc., Computer Associates, Inc., Digital Equipment Corporation, Hewlett-Packard Company, Iconovex Corporation, Illustra Information Technologies, Inc., Informix Software, Inc., Intuit, Inc., Macromedia, Metrowerks, Inc., Novell, Inc., Oracle Corporation, Paper Software, Inc., Precept Software, Inc., RAD Technologies, Inc., The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc., Silicon Graphics, Inc., Spider Technologies, Sybase, Inc., Toshiba Corporation, Verity, Inc., and Vermeer Technologies, Inc., have expressed their endorsement of JavaScript as an open standard object scripting language and intend to provide it in future products. The draft specification of JavaScript, as well as the final draft specification of Java, is planned for publishing and submission to appropriate standards bodies for industry review and comment this month. [But Sun will never make Java an open standard, despite this promise.]
JavaScript is an easy-to-use object scripting language designed for creating live online applications that link together objects and resources on both clients and servers. While Java is used by programmers to create new objects and applets [and has nothing to do with JavaScript], JavaScript is designed for use by HTML page authors and enterprise application developers to dynamically script the behavior of objects running on either the client or the server. JavaScript is analogous to Visual Basic in that it can be used by people with little or no programming experience to quickly construct complex applications. JavaScript's design represents the next generation of software designed specifically for the Internet and is:
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Bill Joy does however deserve full credit for the "csh" shell scripting language, which, as languages go, is a horribly designed total piece of shit, chock full of gaping security holes, and dripping with syntactic syrup if ipecac. Fortunately he didn't manage to get any of his original ideas from "csh" into Java.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
I think that Firebird was a Mac specific variant before it was renamed Firefox (on Mac). While there was Firefox on Win and Lin, it was Firebird and Camino on Mac (now Firefox and Camino).
InfoSec that matters, when it counts.
After reading this I can only wonder what MLAgazine is, but I don't even feel like reading it's homepage.
All this is general commentary anyone could find on any number of pages.
It's notable only because of all the errors --- misnaming Marc Andreesen as well as the names of the various browsers at different points
Here's a simple reason Netscape fell.
Back then, pretty much everyone was in "ooh! flashy button" mode. The browser was gonna replace the OS, or something like that. Every pretty new feature was taken so enthusiastically, every flashy element that a designer could put on his page.
So what happened? People developed menus, buttons, every kind of flashy new DHTML widget they could think up.
And how'd they do it? IE had document.all, Netscape had document.layers.
IE displayed CSS kinda buggy, Netscape crashed and burned.
Document.all could arbitrarily access any part of the page, document.layers was finicky, couldn't handle real-time manipulation of most CSS styles, and you couldn't keep track of where an element was to find it.
You got your job done quick with IE4, and then decided you'd rather add new features and improve your site than spending countless more hours dealing with a buggy Netscape interface. Netscape users could look at your site the old fashioned way --- after all, they're used to it, aren't they?
(Besides, once you've done it for IE, doing the same thing again is boring.)
Now Mozilla comes along. document.getElementById is the same as document.all for any practical purpose, and for most basic DHTML manipulations, you can write a single tiny function that abstracts the two.
IE4 was closer to the standard that the W3C eventually released.
Netscape was an entirely different paradigm, and it didn't work.
I don't like Microsoft, but I don't hate them. I don't love Apple, I don't hate them either. (Although I am using Safari at the moment.) Netscape 4 sucked. IE4 was actually better. So monopoly power helped, but even still, they actually had the better product. Both companies pulled the same crap --- Netscape abused standards just as much, if not more, than Microsoft.
Mozilla's great not because Microsoft's bad. Mozilla's great because it lets me browse the web on all my computers -- Linux, Mac, and Windows too.
Mozilla's even greater because now that people use the standards, I don't have to use Mozilla. I can use Konqueror, Safari, and even (newer versions of) Internet Explorer and get the same page. On any computer. Exactly what Microsoft didn't want. And frankly, exactly what Netscape didn't want either: other browsers doing the same thing. It wasn't about the OS becoming irrelevant, it was about NS becoming the new platform, not browsers in general. Neither company was noble. Now, with all the browsers, OSS (or not), there exists a situation close to what people really wanted.
This reminds me so much of election time and a politician claiming that he is not a cretin for beating a sack of 24 kittens to death with a stick because his opponents beat a sack of 25 to death in 1976. Fortunately we live in the here and now, not in the past.
Where are we today? Who is sticking to standards now, and who is deviating in anti-competitive ways? The reality of the current situation tarnishes your white knight a little....
Another factor is MS' mantra of "re-format and re-install". Each time that happens, those excellent browsers hit the bit bucket and MSIE pops back up. Some small percentage is going to fail to re-install the better browsers -- they forget, or run out of time, or get tired of doing it, etc. Since we're talking about such a large population size, even a small percentage works out to be a large number of users.
Until the install CDs/DVDs automatically install other browsers (or don't install MSIE automatically) there is little point in philosophizing about a free market. When it comes to desktop computers, a free market is still a ways off.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.