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Browser Wars Declared Over?
Kelson writes to mention Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera and Google took the stage this week at the Web 2.0 expo and in addition to discussing pressing issues have declared their intent to avoid another browser war. All the panelists agreed that security was the largest concern currently facing browser developers. "Brendan Eich, the chief technology officer at Mozilla, said that security was hard and always will be. 'I don't think we should take security lightly; it's an end-to-end problem and we have to step outside the current model to win on this front,' he said. For his part, Chris Wetherell, a software engineer at Google, said one of the scenarios that kept him awake at night was offline access to the browser and what that meant from a security perspective, particularly on the user-to-user front."
90 Lb Weakling: We all agree to stop kicking sand on each other.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Microsoft: "Guys? Hey guys! The browser wars are over! Can you hear me? The _war_ is _over_! Go ahead and lay down your weapons! Stop fighting! That's right, come out come out wherever you are! Put down the guns!"
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
It'll never be over, not as long as there is a drop of blood in our typing fingers!! How dare they try to take away a fundamental part of our fun!
We will fight them on the keyboards, we will fight them on the intertubes, we will fight them where and whenever an html statement is exectured!!
For his part, Chris Wetherell, a software engineer at Google, said one of the scenarios that kept him awake at night was offline access to the browser and what that meant from a security perspective, particularly on the user-to-user front.
It's statements like these that make me think he must be an absolute blast at parties.
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
No need to read the article people...
Opera won!!!
Microsoft declares "Mission Accomplished."
Luke Spyglass: "You fought in the browser wars?"
NCSA Mosaic: "I was once a web browser the same as your father."
Luke Spyglass: "My father didn't browse the web. He was a finger server at the community college."
NCSA Mosaic: "That's what your Uncle told you. He didn't hold with your father's ideals. He thought he should stay home. Not gotten involved."
Luke Spyglass: "I wish I had known him."
NCSA Mosaic: "He was a cunning application, and the best downloaded in the galaxy. I understand you've become quite a good downloader yourself. And he was a good friend. For over a thousand days the W3C protected the web. Before the dark times. Before the Empire"
Luke Spyglass: "How did my father die?"
NCSA Mosaic: "A young web browser named Internet Explorer, who was a derivative of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Emporer hunt down and destroy the W3C standards. He betrayed and murdered your father. IE was seduced by the Dark Side of the internet."
Luke Spyglass: "The internet?"
NCSA Mosaic: "Yes, the internet is what gives a web browser his power. It's an energy field created by all connected computers. It surrounds us. Penetrates us. Binds the world together. Which reminds me. Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your Uncle wouldn't allow. He thought you'd follow NCSA Mosaic on some idealistic crusade."
Luke Spyglass: "What is it?"
NCSA Mosaic: "It is open source browser source code. The weapon of a web browser. Not as random or clumsy as a closed source. An elegant idea for a more civilized age."
The Ass, the Fox, and the Lion
The Ass and the Fox, having entered into partnership together for their mutual protection, went out into the forest to hunt. They had not proceeded far when they met a Lion. The Fox, seeing imminent danger, approached the Lion and promised to contrive for him the capture of the Ass if the Lion would pledge his word not to harm the Fox. Then, upon assuring the Ass that he would not be injured, the Fox led him to a deep pit and arranged that he should fall into it. The Lion, seeing that the Ass was secured, immediately clutched the Fox, and attacked the Ass at his leisure.
MORAL: Never trust your enemy.
Appropriate parameter assignments for ass, fox, and lion are left as an exercise for the reader.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
and nobody came?
All we are saying, is give HTML 5.0 a chance!
With respects to John Lennon.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Good. Now that this distracting war is over, we can get back to the really important wars: vi versus emacs; LISP versus, well, anything else; and where to put those little curly brackets.
This historical irony moment provided by Neville Chamberlain.
"But we had a piece of paper!!!!"
As a web developer, my biggest concern (aside from the difficulties creating multi-column CSS layouts) involves differences in the way browsers render pages. It's incredibly frustrating to write perfectly valid HTML/XHTML and CSS and have the pages show up very differently depending on the browser. The biggest offender, of course, is Internet Explorer, and now that version 7 is out but many haven't switched to it, I have to test in both 6 and 7. And since I couldn't figure out a way to install both on one PC, my workstation now has a Mac and two PCs for IE6 and IE7 browser testing. I consider this Microsoft's contribution to global warming....
I estimate that at least 10% of my time is spent avoiding and tracking down browser display differences that really shouldn't exist in the first place. I get paid by the hour so maybe I shouldn't complain, but the inefficiency of the whole thing still bugs me.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
The objective never was to make firefox or opera the next king of the web, but to have competition in the browser market. By having serious and various competitors in various platforms, we need standards in order to make web pages equal independent of your preferred client.
Right now I can't remember the last time I saw a "best viewed in IE X.0" warning, and that should be an indicator that people know there's a diversity of clients in the market, and making you site exclusive to a particular browser, instead of compiling with standards everyone can implement, means greatly limiting your customer base.
This is good news for Firefox. So long as Microsoft thinks it has "won" the browser war, the steady erosion of IE's market share will happen by hook or by crook. That is, viral petri dishes like Active X will be slowly become phased out, and it will be increasingly difficult for MS to differentiate their browser from other free ones.
Dog is my co-pilot.
So, while I'm glad the developers see security as being a high priority, I hope all of the browser developers do not forget about standards compliance.
They were there as a major developer of web applications. They've also worked closely with Mozilla (at one point they were employing several developers specifically to work on Firefox, and they might still be), and were there to talk about the future of webapps.
Over?!?! It's not over 'til we say it's over. Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor??....Hell no!.............
"...a civilian some of the time, a soldier part of the time and a patriot all of the time." -Brig. Gen. James Drain
"You're saying Microsoft is a rogue company?"
Microsoft is multi-classed. One of their weapons is a Greatsword of Backstabbing, +20. It ignores armor, too.
Bearded Dragon
Microsoft is even offering free images for Virtual PC, preloaded with IE6 and IE7. The annoying thing is that they're time limited, expiring in August. I think they're being entirely too optimistic about the upgrade rate, especially considering all the computers that can't upgrade to IE7 for technical or policy reasons.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
That is one of the biggest problems. Especially from the point of view of a web developer. I spend countless hours trying to work out differences between web developers. However, the biggest problem isn't the differences, it's the inability to debug the problem. The Web developer tools in FireFox, including Edit HTML and Edit CSS, make fixing these problems a breeze. Doing the same thing in any browser is a nightmare. Although some tools are available in other browsers, they aren't as good and complete as what's available in Firefox. I think that more companies, MS Especially, because of their large market share should look at their web browsers from an application platform standpoint, ant try to do what they can to improve the usability for those designing the web sites, instead of focusing on the person browsing the web.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I am reminded of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin meeting at Yalta in 1945 as they start to pre-emptively divide up their mutual enemy, while declaring that they'll all cooperate in the future.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Don't forget the vorpal blade of competition of dismemberment, the +2 quill of proprietary formats, the reams of BillGee's Grasping Fist scrolls, the +5 ring of protection from gov't lawsuits, and finally the portable hole they use to make XP quickly disappear.
RECURSIVE DECLARATION ERROR! THREAD HALTED.
You can install both at the same computer if you run Linux. Take a look at WineTools.
Rethinking email
Just had to add ... Airborne Chair of Ballmer Rage with +10 projectile damage
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
...this is the outcome.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
NCSA Mosaic: IE was a good friend.
NCSA Mosaic: When I first knew him, your father was already a great application. But I was amazed how strongly the Internet was with him. I took it upon myself to train him as a browser. I thought that I could instruct him just as well as Lynx. I was wrong.
Luke Spyglass: There IS still standards compliance in him. I've felt it.
NCSA Mosaic: He more Microsoft's interpretation of W3C standards now than compliant; twisted and evil.
Luke Spyglass: I can't do it, Mosaic.
NCSA Mosaic: You cannot escape your destiny. You must face Internet Explorer again.
Luke Spyglass: I can't kill my own father.
NCSA Mosaic: Then Microsoft has already won. You were our only hope.
Luke Spyglass: Lynx spoke of another.
NCSA Mosaic: The other he spoke of is your twin sister.
Luke Spyglass: But I HAVE no sister.
NCSA Mosaic: Hmm. To protect you both from the Emperor, you were hidden from your father when you were born. The Emperor knew, as I did, if IE were to have any offspring, they would be a threat to him. That is the reason why your sister remains safely anonymous.
Luke Spyglass: Opera! Opera's my sister.
NCSA Mosaic: Your codebase serves you well. Bury your threads deep down, Luke. They do you credit, but they could be made to serve the Emperor.
Actually, what they wanted to announce was that the major combat operations have ended...
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I just got an image in my head of Bill Gates in a server room with a huge "Mission Accomplished" sign behind him...
I, for one, would not want the browser wars to be over - as someone else pointed out, the fact that there's a "war" going on is a good thing, since that means that web developers, frameworks and companies all have to think of the other browsers, instead of only IE, as they did ca. 5 years ago. This, in turn, means that they will try to stick to the official standards (as much as they can), which in turn means that if I'd want to develop a new browser from scratch, it would be a lot easier for me to code it, and for users to use it, as long as it sticks to the standards, which means that competition is open for all. Even though I try to enlighten all IE users I meet, and try to get them to switch to a superior browser, the fact that IE users are out there is fine with me, as long as their mass doesn't squash any alternatives. So, now that the browser wars are waging again, we only have to start the 'war' on Office-like-products (by getting OpenDocument accepted, or at the very least all important standards opened), in order to give alternative software suites a fair fighting chance to compete on functional grounds, instead of the same old "oh, but everybody else is using MS Office, so I can't switch even if I wanted to". After that is accomplished, getting people to switch, or at least try alternative operating systems would be a breeze.
We can't grow when browsers are killing eachother and commiting crimes with one another.
[Connection closed by foreign host]
Microsoft doesn't think it has won the browser war, it knows it lost and gave up years ago.
For Microsoft, winning the war meant ensuring that the most viewed and essential web sites only worked in Windows, or worked significantly better in Windows than other operating systems. In other words, it mean crippling the web for non-Windows platforms. And for a brief period in the late 90s and early 00s this was exactly the case.
Prior to, say, 2002 or 2003, there was a real penalty for not using IE in Windows. But that hasn't been the case for years. In fact, many web sites now work better in Firefox than in IE.
Interoperability won, and Microsoft lost. What's odd is that (apparently) so many people still don't recognize that fact.
The goal of IE development in 1997 was to become the web web browser that mattered. The goal of IE in 2007 is to make sure the built-in Windows web browser doesn't suck.
ENDUT! HOCH HECH!
Actually, I don't think that's the case. Seriously, I can actually picture Visual Studio's development team at Microsoft glaring evilly at the Internet Explorer team. Have you seen what Visual Studio thinks of IE hacks in your CSS? Let's just say that if it looks right in VS, it'll look right in Firefox. But the demons help you if you want it to look right in Internet Explorer. "filter? What the fuck kind of CSS attribute is filter? FIX YOUR CSS2.1, BITCH!" "-moz-opacity? Nuh uh! I don't see THAT in the spec!" And my personal favourite "Wherre's your demon damned doctype? INSERT A BLOODY DOCTYPE!" Yeah. That's Visual Studio's take on "IE CSS Extensions" or "Firefox CSS extensions". Oh, and VS does the Box Model like Firefox, not IE.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
They made a web browser webapp. Proponents say it's just like the desktop web browsers, except you can use it from anywhere with a web browser!
I'd say that is a twofold problem. Bugs are always being worked on (at least in Opera and FireFox). And Opera has taken a page from Firefox, and started expanding their developer tools. But the other part of the problem is of course expecting pixel perfect rendering on ANY browser. If you want page perfect exact rendering, HTML + CSS isn't the medium for that. Try PS or PDF (which is mostly specialized PS).
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
MS, Google, Mozilla, Opera...pick the odd one out of this list of browser creators.
The Browser Wars are over when Microsoft bundles Firefox with Windows. (They will of course also have the latest IE, maybe opera too, possibly a Konquerer spin-off.)
Until then, it's all just wishful thinking.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.