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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."
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
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> 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...
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!
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.
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.
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