Slashdot Mirror
Netscape Founder Backs New Browser
wirelessjb writes to share that after a resounding defeat at the hands of Microsoft in the first major browser war of the mid 1990s, Marc Andreessen is looking to have another go at the market by backing a new startup called "RockMelt." "Mr. Andreessen suggested the new browser would be different, saying that most other browsers had not kept pace with the evolution of the Web, which had grown from an array of static Web pages into a network of complex Web sites and applications. 'There are all kinds of things that you would do differently if you are building a browser from scratch,' Mr. Andreessen said.
RockMelt was co-founded by Eric Vishria and Tim Howes, both former executives at Opsware, a company that Mr. Andreessen co-founded and then sold to Hewlett-Packard in 2007 for about $1.6 billion. Mr. Howes also worked at Netscape with Mr. Andreessen."
Netscape's interface was the best
Long live Seamonkey
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
'There are all kinds of things that you would do differently if you are building a browser from scratch,' Mr. Andreessen said.
Yeah, I'd build a browser more like... Chrome. Which addressed this issue less than two years ago. Has the web changed a lot in two years?
What's the profit model for this startup? That's the most interesting question, to me.
Terrorist, bomb, al Qaeda, nuclear, yellowcake, kill, assassinate. Carnivore is dead... long live Echelon.
The Rockmelt website isn't too interesting. It's a bit presumptuous to assume it will get a /.ing. Perhaps it is suffering from the Marketing Dept assuming people will come back later in the hope of revelation, rather than them saying "ooh nice logo" and then instantly forgetting about them and moving along.
I'd build a browser more like... Chrome.
I wouldn't. I'd dump most of the custom GUI features in Chrome and Firefox, and quit screwing around with the stuff around the browser window. It's the stuff inside the browser window that you actually care about, not whether the icons are grey metal or jello blue.
What does he mean that most browsers aren't keeping pace with the web? By definition, browsers define the pace of the web. If your browser can't see it then it doesn't exist yet.
There's no one out there making a good living by creating webpages that browsers can't display.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I'm pretty sure someone already made Flock. :)
This "article" is just another marketing ploy for some vapourware. Can't you see that? By gum, /. isn't the same these days 8) There are a couple of good jokes in this topic but in the end this is all just an exercise in promotion and we are it's semi willing participants, breathing life into the marketing machine.
IT'S ALL JUST BOLLOCKS - I WANT NEWS ON MY /. NOT THIS SHIT.
The big story here is Mr. Andreessen is backing a browser product, a market thought to be dead and buried in terms of profit. He was profiled in Forbes a while back and his name resonates with the financial types. He has credibility with investors because he called Facebook and Twitter (among others) as a buy pretty early in their lifecycles. Corollary, the Forbes article mentions that he has a crap-ton of OPM to invest now, so he can afford to take some long-shots. -ellie
RockMelt is going to be born dead. There is nothing it can do in terms of Facebook integration that Firefox + Facebook-related theme + Facebook plugin. And RockMelt has no viable business model - there is no place anymore for mainstream browsers.
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
we all know how popular flock turned out to be.
Each process is placed in a sandbox to protect your security and privacy.
Jails/partitions, or just chroot? What, on Windows?
Or do you mean the javascript engine is a separate instance (because it's a separate process) so they're sandboxed from each other because they're in different processes. Which is a good thing, but describing it as putting each PROCESS in a sandbox is misleading as hell.
Social nets and their tools are less responsive and not practical across country borders. I prefer not to use them and I probably won't use this Rockmelt. Slashdot has been getting less and less responsive because of all of this social net/advertising/user click tracking. From China, I click a link which wants something from facebook and then the web freezes from my perspective. I have to seek other proxy alternatives to view the pages and turn them on. This makes the entire web viewing experience painfully slow and I can't watch live video in this proxy environment. If Rockmelt links to any web site that the Chinese firewall doesn't like it will slow down the entire web page visiting experience. Already with just firefox and slashdot linking to google/job ads the slashdot web page is very heavy and slow to load.
Seeing the existence of Facebook/Twitter/Rockmelt tells me that so-called web page designers fail to understand how bandwidth isn't the same everywhere in the world. I certainly prefer all the web designers having simple pages with ads/simple text/simple images coming from the same site. All this cross-site scripting stuff already is a security mess. Keep it simple. Keep it fast. If you provide video, give a link to download it. Don't force the user to view it in a web page because not all of us have that BANDWIDTH you take for granted. DRM is crap and I won't by anything built with it. I won't buy any monitors/tvs/stereos with it. If you want me to watch a video, then give me a link and give me the freedom to download it and play it when I want with whatever I want. If you want me to watch a video, then give it to me without restrictions. If not, I prefer not to watch your crap anyways.
Good luck to you all!
This is a little off-topic, but here is another example. There is a litany of evidence that Intel used illegal, anti-competitive practices against AMD. Every major vendor lined up to testify against Intel because of this. Several countries have already found Intel guilty. But those illegal business tactics were effective to the point that it kept AMD from developing market share, even when they had superior products. Intel cheated, ran AMD into the ground, and even when all the anti-trust trials are over, AMD might not even exist anymore, let alone come out a victor in any way shape or form.
The lesson seems to be that cheaters do prosper. What you might pay in a fine later is a drop in the bucket to winning market share and becoming a monopoly.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.