The Battle That Could Lose Us The War

this is not new by lubricated · 1999-11-05 01:43 · Score: 2

this is the same as getting office released for linux. If we can't read M$Office documents perfectly will we lose. For me and for many others there is no war. I'm using linux full time and I don't care what others use.

If there is enough linux and mac users than many sites will check in those enviroments first.

--
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.

Re:this is not new by Tower · 1999-11-05 02:05 · Score: 1

Star Office does import most all Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents pretty well, and the macro scripting langue is ~Visual Basic (they just call it BASIC, though). It is quite functional, and is really easy for Office users to pick up...

(rehash similar argument for Wordperfect on Linux, but not with as much vigor)...

I personally don't care much what I use, since i don't exchange docs with many others,and most of them use .rtf anyway 8^)

--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Re:this is not new by dAzED1 · 1999-11-05 02:31 · Score: 1

Not true. If you have an office full of people using a spreadsheet, word processor, or database on linux desktops, why would they need to have M$ office? As long as everyone is using the same thing its ok. But the net is supposed to be built on common standards. The net is external, office products are internal. Maybe all documents should be made in HTML 4.0 (keeping to the standard). Anyone could see that.
This article personally motivated the hell out of me. Sign me up, I'll do what I can.
Re:this is not new by msuzio · 1999-11-05 02:45 · Score: 1

Actually, StarOffice is proving to be quite a nice Office-handler for me. It imports and exports well enough between Excel and Word that I am now much more able to interact with my customers and fellow workers here who use Windows.

The real problem isn't so much the browsers (other than poor Java support, but I think all the browsers experience that in some way -- no one is doing Java well enough for it to be bulletproof or dependable at all). It's the plug-ins, which aren't really controlled by the browser vendors. I used to skip Flash sites; then I got the Flash plug-in for Linux, and now I can see them too (so far, only one site has been worth it, I highly recommend the Pico Scenario [http://www.newgrounds.com/pico/pico.html])

Anyway, the plug-in support issue is one that can be won one vendor at a time. I suggest we start now, mostly by emailing every webmaster who has a site we can't use because they relied on a plug-in. Make sure to cc the vendor, too, it's not hard to find out who makes the plug-in you're looking for.

--
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
Re:this is not new by Danse · 1999-11-05 03:00 · Score: 1

Maybe all documents should be made in HTML 4.0 (keeping to the standard). Anyone could see that.

All the more reason for Microsoft to fight to keep it from happening.

--
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Re:this is not new by Danse · 1999-11-05 03:09 · Score: 1

Oh yeah... another thing. Even if an entire office was using an office suite other than MS Office, would their clients be happy when they sent documents to that office that couldn't be read? I'm sure something could be worked out between them, but it does create an extra hassle for the clients, which is never a good thing.

--
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Re:this is not new by Jon_S · 1999-11-05 03:34 · Score: 1

The only reason my company switched from 100% wordperfect to a WP/MS-Word mix (and still trending more towards word, unfortunately)is that our clients demanded it. We exchange documents all the time. If your clients can't read your documents, then you don'e have any more clients or a job.

back to work....
Re:this is not new by m3000 · 1999-11-05 03:44 · Score: 1

This is one of the HUGE reasons I can never get my dad to use Linux. He doesn't see the point in using it, and he's right. NO ONE he has ever met in the business world (he's a sales engineer that sells valves) uses Linux, and they ALL use MS Office. And Star Office is not good enough, it better than nothing, but it still has it's hicups with MS Office documents and the such.
Re:this is not new by r39525 · 1999-11-05 04:23 · Score: 1

Maybe all documents should be made in HTML 4.0 (keeping to the standard).
An HTML file only displays a single text page, not a document (and if it has any images, they are in separate files as well). We need a web document standard. A single file that contains a whole document would be a real advantage for configuration management.
I propose the following as a standard for web documents with the following attributes:
Single file which can contain multiple objects. These objects could be anything including HTML, XML, images, Java, etc. I suggest the file format be identical to the Java JAR format. Let's call it a WAR file for Web ARchive.
When a URL references a WAR file the (WAR aware) server will be smart enough to open it and extract the referenced elements.
At first standard tools could be used to place the objects into a WAR file. Later, I hope, web publishing tools and word processing tools would be modified to allow the production of WAR files automatically.
Web browsers, WAR aware, could be configured to download entire WAR files with one request. Then navigation to pages contained in the file would be from the browser cache. (The tradeoff is longer initial download for fast navigation once the whole WAR document is in the cache.)
The JAR (WAR) format is good for static content. I'd like to see another format optimized for server-side dynamic update. (I suggest the name WAC for Web Active Content.) This file type could contain databases, indexes, servettes and applets in addition to the kind of static content suitable for the WAR type files.
If anything like this exists now or someone is working on it, please let me know.
r39525@email.sps.mot.com
Re:this is not new by jafac · 1999-11-05 04:28 · Score: 1

Someday you WILL care.

Someday, there WILL be content you can't get to that you want.

And by that time, it WILL be too late. If it isn't already.

While this article may seem a bit melodramatic and alarmist, it does raise a very important issue. And I harp on this all the time in my rabid anti-microsoft posts.

It's the PLATFORM stupid.

Not the OS.
It's the Platform, and how file-formats, protocols and content are tied to it.

If you don't remember that theme from about a year ago, I suggest you go back and re-read the Halloween document.

I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".

--

These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Re:this is not new by jafac · 1999-11-05 04:31 · Score: 1

occasionally, the folks in your office will have to exchange data with folks in other companies. If they've standardized on Windows/Office, you're SOL.

I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".

--

These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Re:this is not new by Starselbrg · 1999-11-05 04:37 · Score: 1

So what happened back when they sent their clients a Word 97 file and their clients only had Word 5/6? The Client went out and bought Word 97.

The upgrade cost a lot. There was a significant difference between 97 and 5/6, which meant training.

The upgrade to StarOffice would not cost a lot (free?). There are not huge differences between Office and StarOffice, which means less training.

In fact, if the client recieved a StarWriter document, they could--for free--install StarOffice, open the file, and then save to whatever format they wanted. It might be a little bit of a hassle, but it cost nothing, 0, the goose egg, whereas a change to a new Word format cost a boatload, a whole bunch, a big enchilada.

--
Got HTML? Want LaTeX? Try html2latex
Re:this is not new by Danse · 1999-11-05 05:56 · Score: 1

True, many did upgrade, but that was because it's Microsoft! They expect to have to upgrade! Very few of them have ever heard of StarOffice. Even fewer would be willing to try to install it when they already have MS Office. You would be considered to be the incompatible one. They would want you to "upgrade" to the standard. Not the other way around.

--
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Re:this is not new by johndoh · 1999-11-05 06:14 · Score: 1

Yeah and im sure everyone out there wants to spend an hour downloading these binary docs. It would not work. People just need to take a stand against MS. People scream for democracy and capitalism but never exsersise it. We minus well be communists and eat what ever we are fed. And when people are too stupid to see that they are being fed something from un unmarked can the government needs to fix it for them. But maybe the government will stand up for the little guy and trash MS with its DOJ case.

-DoH
Re:this is not new by elflord · 1999-11-05 22:01 · Score: 1

Oh yeah... another thing. Even if an entire office was using an office suite other than MS Office, would their clients be happy when they sent documents to that office that couldn't be read?
There are a ton of formats they could use that MSOffice could read just fine, such as RTF and Office 95 ( which just about every office suite can save in ). Of course, there are also standards based alternatives such as pdf.
Re:this is not new by elflord · 1999-11-05 22:03 · Score: 1

MS Office can read/write formats besides its own native format. There's no reason why they need to exchange in the same format they use internally.
Re:this is not new by Abigail-II · 1999-11-05 22:44 · Score: 1

Single file which can contain multiple objects. These objects could be anything including HTML, XML, images, Java, etc. I suggest the file format be identical to the Java JAR format. Let's call it a WAR file for Web ARchive.
That would be real bad. It doesn't gain anything, and you lose a lot. Browser can already download everything in a single connection using the 'Keep-Alive' option of HTTP/1.1, dating from 1995 or 1996.
And you would lose the ability of doing content-negotiation; be it by using HTTP's Accept headers, nested OBJECTs in HTML, or even simple HEAD requests.
On top of losing flexibility, you increase network traffic. If the text of a page has changed, but the 400k image it inlines hasn't, you would have to download the entire image again, just to see the updated text. Indexers like Lycos and Altavista now suddenly have to download a multitude of what they are downloading currently; meaning that it would take even longer before your pages get indexed.
The cache is a red herring. There are no advantages over keeping a huge single file in a cache than a bunch of smaller ones, which combined make the huge one. There are disadvantages though.
There might be some benefits on the server side, but frankly, I fail to see them.
-- Abigail

that about sums it up by qwerjkl · 1999-11-05 01:43 · Score: 1

I was using netscape on a linux box for browsing, but you just can't do that unless you want to be shut out of a LOT of sites. You can't even just use netscape on windows, because IE's javascript is different from the specs, etc. So I am stuck using IE on Windows if I want to browse the web. That's just the way it goes.

--
abrams's advice: when eating an elephant, take one bite at a time.

Re:that about sums it up by Kaa · 1999-11-05 01:50 · Score: 1

I was using netscape on a linux box for browsing, but you just can't do that unless you want to be shut out of a LOT of sites.

YMMV, of course, but I am using netscape on a Solaris box and don't have any problems surfing the web. Very, very rarely I get some Java I can't handle, but then again, in 99% of the cases it's a site that I don't really need, anyway.

Kaa

--

Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Re:that about sums it up by sec · 1999-11-05 01:55 · Score: 2

Horsefeathers.

100% of the genuinely useful sites I've visited have worked just fine with Netscape.

In fact, probably a good 90% of the genuinely useful sites I've visited work just fine in Lynx.

About the only sites I've had trouble with are the ones that use Shockwave Flash, and I've yet to find anything useful on any of them, anyway. Not to mention that they're not all that common.
Re:that about sums it up by jilles · 1999-11-05 02:26 · Score: 1

that says more about you then the browser you are using.

--

Jilles
Re:that about sums it up by MoToMo · 1999-11-05 03:54 · Score: 2

By succumbing to using IE for web browsing, you are shooting yourself in the foot if you want to use linux. Any decent size web site tracks what browsers are used to visit their site, and what OS. If you go to sites with a microsoft browser and a microsoft os, you are fighting for the opposite side than what you claim to be on. If you want a site to make itself (netscape/opera)/linux friendly, start hitting with the choice browser and linux. If any decent webmaster sees a growing percentage of hits from linux machines, he/she will make sure that their site works properly for those users. Fight for the good guys.

-Dan
Re:that about sums it up by vague · 1999-11-05 06:03 · Score: 1

It takes all kinds, but while he might be more productive and a more typical Linux user, he does not represent the majority of web users. That kind of attitude, "the web is a tool, if you are using it for entertainment you are using it the wrong way", is everywhere in the Linux community on a lot of issues. And frankly, while it might make some sense from a purely technical perspective, it's not the kind of attitude that will make Linux mainstream. If we really want that (do we?) the "holier than thou" attitude needs to be dropped. Flash makes for neat visuals and could actually be useful if the designer went fro something but the "glitz factor". Neat looks ARE important, whatever anyone else might think.

--
-
Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.

Browser isn't enough by Eimi+Metamorphoumai · 1999-11-05 01:43 · Score: 2

The Phantom Menace

The problem is that just having a good browser is not enough. The thing we really have trouble with is all the proprietary plugins that are only available under Windows (and some of them for the Mac). While there are some that are available for Linux, what we really need is some portable plugin architecture. Netscape isn't the be all and end all of browsers, but the main problem I have with Netscape under linux is the sites that it doesn't work for, and that isn't because of (the numerous) flaws in netscape. Solutions?

--

Visit me on #weirdness on the Galaxynet.

Re:Browser isn't enough by Evangelion · 1999-11-05 01:49 · Score: 2

"what we really need is some portable plugin architecture."

You mean like Java?

*ducks and runs away*
Re:Browser isn't enough by Anthony+Kilna · 1999-11-05 02:09 · Score: 1

Or maybe another new idea like a platform independant scripting language of some sort, that could run in the browser? We could make it absolutely nothing like Java except for calling a few objects the same things... and call it JavaScript. We'd have to since it just sounds so cool, and we love using an uppercase letter in the middle of a word. *cough, cough*

--
s/[BW]ill(y|iam)?( H\.?)?( G(ate|8)(s|z))?(,? ?v?(III|3)(\.\D)?)?/Girly-man/gi
Re:Browser isn't enough by Leapfrog · 1999-11-05 02:49 · Score: 1

Hey, I bet Perl could do that!
One of these days, I gotta start reworking tkweb. Of course, everyone knows that Perl can do anything.
Leapfrog
Re:Browser isn't enough by VWswing · 1999-11-05 04:31 · Score: 1

The problem is that there is no good browser for
linux. Netscape for linux is a joke. I hate to say it, but it crashes more than it does under windows. It's the only program in linux i've ever found to crash more than it's equivalent under windows, but it does.

--
"And how can this be? For he is the ..."
Re:Browser isn't enough by jafac · 1999-11-05 04:37 · Score: 1

nump.

MacPerl is a very different animal from Perl.

I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".

--

These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.

Linux doesn't do plenty - so what? by jabber · 1999-11-05 01:44 · Score: 2

Yes, your experience with Netscape points out a shortcoming, but not in Linux. Those of use who want the functionality you are missing are free to code it.

Mozilla is a dog, but it's open, and the features are coming, I'm sure.

As for certain MS-Specific extensions that Linux doesn't run: Are you actually surprised? Linux also doesn't run VB. BeOS and AppleOS don't either.

It is not a fault of Linux or it's developers, it's a fault of Microsoft. They are 'embracing and extending, and innovating' wizz-bang toys that they keep closed. This is the crux of their monopolistic practises that the FTC is investigating.

I can easily put together a page that excludes all but IE using surfers. I can put together a website that REQUIRES a PIII processor... My doing so does not put the fault on my competition.

--

-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.

Re:Linux doesn't do plenty - so what? by arcade · 1999-11-05 01:54 · Score: 2

Yes, your experience with Netscape points out a shortcoming, but not in Linux. Those of use who want the functionality you are missing are free to code it.

You are missing the point. As the article pointed out - if we don't catch up and start supporting everything that the freakin' microsoftbrowser supports, then people won't move to linux. People will move to windows. Then we lose the war.

The way to win, is to make mozilla usable for everyone.

All those who are able to! Go Hack! The rest of us, let's continue to support Linux and OSS.

--

--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
Re:Linux doesn't do plenty - so what? by Dr.Whiz-Bang · 1999-11-05 02:21 · Score: 1

It is not a fault of Linux or it's developers, it's a fault of Microsoft. They are 'embracing and extending, and innovating' wizz-bang toys that they keep closed. This is the crux of their monopolistic practises that the FTC is investigating.

that's WHIZ-bang.

gg

--

gg
Dr.Whiz-Bang
Re:Linux doesn't do plenty - so what? by Eccles · 1999-11-05 03:26 · Score: 2

if we don't catch up and start supporting everything that the freakin' microsoftbrowser supports, then people won't move to linux.

But can Linux? Realistically?

Java and Flash should be doable, they're documented. The only potential problem is having to run apps designed for Microsoft "Java."

But ActiveX? Running ActiveX plug-ins? That's a whole 'nuther ball of wax. I'm not sure you'll ever get those running under Linux. And if you can't, some sites will always be inaccessible.

--
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Re:Linux doesn't do plenty - so what? by sjames · 1999-11-05 04:01 · Score: 2

(Engage humor mode!) While we're at it, Linux doesn't support the delete client's hard drive and crash plugin either. Perhaps we need to make THE killer website and put it behind a warning page: "You may browse this site with ANYTHING but windows, you have been warned....

Mozilla is critical! by IGnatius+T+Foobar · 1999-11-05 01:44 · Score: 4

Dave is absolutely correct: Mozilla is probably the single most important project for the future of free software. Nearly all technology development for the next decade will be tied to the web in some way, and it's absolutely vital that web technology be kept open.

Hopefully, AOL realizes this. If Microsoft ends up controlling the web, it's only a matter of time before AOL is reduced to insignifance for most purposes. Perhaps they don't realize just how urgent it is, though. AOL needs to make the Netscape Client Engineering Group a very high priority, and get Mozilla into the AOL client as soon as possible. This alone will shift the browser market away from Microsoft in a huge way. Yes, I know about the bundling deal, and I don't think it's worth it.

We do need to focus on more than just the browser, though. While Mozilla is absolutely the most important, we still need to have a diverse array of software available, to give the Linux platform some value, both on the desktop and server side. I personally am working on a replacement for MS Exchange and hopefully will be able to hook up with the developers of some of the better Outlook clones, in order to offer a nice end-to-end integrated solution. Mozilla tie-in? Absolutely. Everything's gotta work with the Web, and I've already got a good web-based front end in place.

Heed Dave's call and spread the word. This is very important.

--
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!

Re:Mozilla is critical! by msuzio · 1999-11-05 02:55 · Score: 1

Keeping the Web open isn't the responsibility of the browser manufacturers as much as it is the responsibility of website designers and programmers.

It's as simple as this:

- Try to stay cross-platform. Insist your clients realize that this keeps them available to the largest customer segment possible
- Realize that glitz might get them on the site, but it rarely if ever gets them to stay there or be a frequent customer. People use CDNOW and Amazon because they have great shopping experiences, not because a background song plays when they hit the site.
- Use open formats. Multiple formats. Most really good site with video content go to the trouble to have RealVideo, Quicktime, and AVI's.

--
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
Re:Mozilla is critical! by Heretik · 1999-11-05 03:41 · Score: 1

Mozilla is good, but something GPL is better. Don't flame me, I'm sick of the typical response bashing the GPL for nonexistant reasons. Its just a better license for the community. Mnemonic is GPL isn't it? :)
Re:Mozilla is critical! by Lando · 1999-11-05 03:47 · Score: 1

No,
Stop for a second and think about what you are saying... AoL this and AoL that you can't blame the lack of a browser on AOL.
The code is there, available. Join in, beta the code, work on the code if you have the knowledge. Help with the documentation.
I believe Dave is right, but remember that AOL is not in the driver's seat. They are helping fund this project, but they are already throwing a lot of weight behind it. The only reason this project will fail, (fork, fork, fork) is if the community does not jump in and give enough support.
AOL is still the same shi**y company that we ragged on for years, just because they bought out netscape doesn't make them any better than Microsoft. Be the code has been released and they are helping to fund the rework on it. The community has to become involved.
Lando

--
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */

And Mozilla is going to help how? by Kaa · 1999-11-05 01:44 · Score: 1

It seems that the point of the article is the spread of proprietary to Microsoft extensions on the web -- Java code that will run only in IE, plug-ins that exist only for Window machines, etc.
That's all true and is a danger. However, I completely fail to see how Mozilla is going to help us here. Unless the author believes that Mozilla will win the browser war on Windows machines (dream on), it will do nothing to stop people from producing Windows-only plug-ins or writing Microsoft-specific code.

Kaa

--

Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.

Re:And Mozilla is going to help how? by gmc · 1999-11-05 02:25 · Score: 1

>However, I completely fail to see how Mozilla is >going to help us here. Unless the author believes >that Mozilla will win the browser war on Windows >machines (dream on), it will do nothing to stop >people from producing Windows-only plug-ins or >writing Microsoft-specific code.

But Mozilla doesn't have to *win* the browser war. It needs only to recapture a sizeable portion of the (rather innacurate) browser statistics. Nothing more.

If Mozilla can get these reporting sites to list Netscape's total usage back to anywhere near 50%, companies will be unwilling to exclude large sections of their audience by using M$ specific extensions. The browser market dictates client-side web development decisions far more than any developer does.

And it doesn't matter that these statistics are largely useless. They are used and cited by people who pay for their sites to be built. One of the first questions asked on any development projects I have participated in has been "What percentage of users will be able to see foo..." And they don't care to hear about how irrelevant these statistics might be.

So, Mozilla can help by being the leanest, cleanest, fastest browser (and download) possible. There are plenty of people who will use it simply because it is *not* IE. And they have friends.

I'd pay for a good, stable browser for Linux by georgeha · 1999-11-05 01:45 · Score: 2

There's a real market opportunity there, and Mozilla and Netscape aren't there yet.

And what about all the companies with $200 surfing boxes we keep reading about, do they have some cool browser up there sleeves?

George

? by technos · 1999-11-05 01:46 · Score: 1

He makes a good point, although I see the Apache group doing a RE/RI job on the IIS 'features' as a last ditch effort befor waning into oblivion.

But I don't see all of the problem residing w/Mozilla. The problem is the Win-centric web developers. They see the 'kewl new sound/graphics service/plugin' and implement it, counting on the fact that 80% of their audience are IE users, and the remaining 20% are used to meing marginalized. Meanwhile, they're serving the content from Apache servers on *nix boxen, and looking like hypocrites.

Letter writing campaign? 'Give us Shockwave, give you DEATH'? (ex only.)

--
.sig: Now legally binding!

Re:? by HerrNewton · 1999-11-05 02:35 · Score: 2

Web designers are not the problem--W3BD3Z1NR3Z, our version of script kiddies, are the problem. Good Web designers don't alienate large portions of their audience--20% of all users is a HUGE share of the user base.

--

----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Re:? by jochen · 1999-11-05 03:50 · Score: 1

> counting on the fact that 80% of their audience
> are IE users, and the remaining 20% are used to
> meing marginalized.

Depending on the "features" being used, the 20% might easily raise to maybe 60% without the author even knowing. Reason is that most (big) companies firewalls do some filtering based on content. E.g. i know of no German bank which doesn't block Active X... And on our non-commercial site www.scram.de, almost 40% of all accesses are from within big companies (seems their employees have most spare time :) )

-- Jochen
Re:? by mill · 1999-11-07 00:30 · Score: 1

What about all those users out there that can't change? Those who just can't see all your pretty pictures?

I hope one day all you immoral bastards will have to face the fact that your pretty "web sites" are inaccessible. Maybe it will be because of some accident that made you blind and suddenly all your work and all your interests are gone from you because of "web designers" like yourself. Even worse it might be your children that can't access daddy's or mommy's work because his or her shortsightedness (definitely no pun intended).

You make me sick all of you.

/mill
Re:? by HerrNewton · 1999-11-07 00:45 · Score: 1

What about all those users out there that can't change? Those who just can't see all your pretty pictures?

Did I say that I advocated making web sites inaccessible to users without graphical browsers? No. With every site I create, I ensure that it render competently in Lynx and is as close to "pure" HTML as possible. (i.e. It validates; if it doesn't, I build my own doc-type.) Why do I do this? Spiders only read text.

So please, go back to your fanatic Luddite cave. Don't be one of those people who don't think a site about kaleidoscopes should have images.

--

----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Re:? by mill · 1999-11-07 03:02 · Score: 1

"Don't blame the web page makers because they used a lot of images that make the site look nice, it's your own fault for choosing that browser, and if you don't like it, then change."

What does "a lot of images that make a site look nice" mean if not making it inaccessible to users without graphical browser?

If an image intent is to make things look nice then it is totally meaningless to a non-visual user agent.

Sure using images because they have a meaning (like on a site about kaleidoscopes) is perfectly acceptable. Just as providing video clips. This is separate from making things "look nice".

If you don't mean what you say don't say it.

Btw, validation isn't enough. Validators don't catch the misuse of TABLEs for layout or BLOCKQUOTE for indention. Of course most non-visual user agents seem to have accepted the fact that "web designers" don't understand HTML and therefore more or less ignore the semantics of elements.

/mill

This is a VERY good point... by SgtPepper · 1999-11-05 01:47 · Score: 1

Alright people, let's start a from scratch, no sleep, code till you die, the perfect web browser coding mission let's go, let's go, let's GO!

(BTW that story is very familiar, main reason why my parent's machine is STILL windows, despite my attempts)

My new .sig:

If fail, we will lose the war.

Words of Wisdom by cdmz1 · 1999-11-05 01:48 · Score: 1

Excellent points made here. I think that everyone on Slashdot should take heed of these words of wisdom.

--
...they were right about you...

i'm failing to see the point by Xtacy · 1999-11-05 01:48 · Score: 1

Do you think that if linux has a really sweet web browser people will switch to it? - I don't think so.

Did I switch to Linux 3 years ago because it had Netscape? -- No

I also think that because people are not going to be switching to linux because it has a cool browser, those same people are still going to use IE and get special bonuses from accessing IIS sites, and linux will never stop MS from doing this.

Your wife wants a windows box because it sounds like all she does is surf the web. So get her a windows box cuz its what will "work for her".

btw i dont see a war happening. I see the MS side serving itself, and I see the open-source side serving everyone, a little unfair yes, but we choose to do that so why are we bitching so much?

Re:i'm failing to see the point by housefly · 1999-11-05 02:10 · Score: 1

I second this idea. I didn't switch from Windoze to Linux for the web browser. Let her have her M$ machine, and after it crashes a whole bunch, ask her how much those coupons were worth.

What website could be worth so much that you'd give up a stable OS to view it?
Re:i'm failing to see the point by treke · 1999-11-05 02:33 · Score: 1

You're missing the point, why should she have to give up access to coupons and other plugin based systems just because she uses linux. Wonder if this falls under any US anti discrimination laws :)
treke
Re:i'm failing to see the point by housefly · 1999-11-05 02:54 · Score: 1

Ok, maybe you're right. I see it like this though:
A certain supermarket chain where I live uses something called a "club card" as a substitute for coupons. You get the sale price when you use your club card. I don't have a club card. Why? If I gave them the information they wanted in order to receive a card, the data base associated with me would become much more complete than it already is. :) If I gave them fictitious info in order to get the card, I've surrendered my ethics. I don't have full and complete access because I choose not to comply with the "club card" game. (In fact, I don't frequent this supermarket at all anymore.) Whose loss is it then really?

Those sites lose a lot more than Linux users. There are many other OS's out there than *nix and Windoze, and there are even other browsers! It's always give and take -- no piece of software is everything to everyone.
Re:i'm failing to see the point by dabe · 1999-11-05 03:01 · Score: 1

Do you think that if linux has a really sweet web browser people will switch to it?

This is not the point. The point being made which concerns linux on the desktop is that once linux has a decent web browser there will be one less reason to use another operating system.
Re:i'm failing to see the point by NaCh0 · 1999-11-05 05:46 · Score: 1

Yes! Albertson's rules. When I have a choice, I never go to ABCO/Safeway/Frys grocery stores anymore. Albertson's stores are almost without exception cleaner, priced lower, and generally more pleasant to be in. The best part is Albertson's doesn't have those stupid "Advantage Cards."

I've converted friends to Albertson's as well. It almost feels similar to the reasons we switch to linux. :-)

Brian
Re:i'm failing to see the point by Last+Warrior · 1999-11-05 06:09 · Score: 1

In the last 5 years, the internet has become more and more Browser centric. As newbies and marketing execs get a hold of the infinite selling machine that is the internet (unfortunately), those of us who grew up with the true underlying power of the internet are left standing with our dicks in our hands. in order for Linux to win this war against M$, they must not only win the technological war, but also the sociological one. The perceptions about the technology that drive people in one direction or another will determine the outcome of this war. M$'s strategy for gaining control of the market in any market is obvious. They have the trust and backing of the population behind them. They have been raised on the premise that Microsoft Standards are superior to others and those who dont follow are signalling thier own demise. In order to change people minds and raise the level of collective intelligence, there must be a greater level of support from the community and the media. People need to see everyday when they turn on thier televisions how easy windows is made to crash. How unsecure. Each and every windows user has to feel the pain when thier machine crashes because a script kiddy living down the street wants to have a little fun at thier expense. At this point, there is really only one solution and it is not winning at Microsofts game. Security is the key and alot ofpublic awareness. this coupled with a constant pounding of reality in those thick skulls of the desciples of Bill. Some people dont know better.. so its time to educate them.. by force if necessary.. LW
Re:i'm failing to see the point by treke · 1999-11-05 06:51 · Score: 1

I can agree with that. Down with Vons! Viva Albertsons!
treke

The problem is with how browsers are built by brennanw · 1999-11-05 01:48 · Score: 5

I've never understood why browsers are designed the way they are. Basically, all HTML translation capability is built in to the browser itself, meaning that when new features come out you need to download a new !@#$% browser.

Why? Browsers are, for the most part, free these days. There's no competitive advantage for that.

If the browser were _modular_, with the display engine as part of the browser, but the information on all the tags and extras as a series of plugins -- you'd be able to add support for new HTML code ON THE FLY.

That's how XML is kind of supposed to work, isn't it?

I think what we need is a plugin-centric browser... one with a basic display engine that knows how to draw/display stuff, but doesn't come with any specific information. Then plugins with that information -- plugins that can be updated on the fly, or replaced when needed -- are added, and voia! Superbrowser!

So then you get your HTML 4.0, Cascading Stylesheet, XML, and proprietary tag support whenever you need to.

Oh, and you can have a program that sets your browser identification as whatever the hell you want it to say, or even change it on the fly.

Just a thought...

--
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati

Re:The problem is with how browsers are built by Ledge+Kindred · 1999-11-05 02:18 · Score: 3

I think what we need is a plugin-centric browser... one with a basic display engine that knows how to draw/display stuff, but doesn't come with any specific information. Then plugins with that information -- plugins that can be updated on the fly, or replaced when needed -- are added, and voia! Superbrowser!

And of course 99% of those plugins will all be distributed as .DLLs written with Microsoft Visual Studio. No source, either, because this is proprietary technology, you see.

Oh, you can't use .DLLs on your platform. Oh well, I guess you can't view our new proprietary content. Sorry.

No, we don't need a browser that is plug-in based, we have those and they obviously only work if you own the OS platform and browser that uses them as well. What we need are sites that conform to STANDARDS.

Unfortunately that will never happen.

I don't think the "war" will ever be over. There will ALWAYS be a company somewhere perverting the standards for their own benefit. If they can convince enough of their users that the advantages of doing something that will never work anywhere enough outweights the drawbacks, it will catch on and you're right back at square one.

There will ALWAYS be more people willing to go for "Cheap, easy and the WRONG thing to do" than "Less cheap, less easy, but the RIGHT thing to do." People are lazy.

-=-=-=-=-

--
-=-=-=-=-
My mom's going to kick you in the face!
Re:The problem is with how browsers are built by cheese63 · 1999-11-05 02:30 · Score: 1

Another solution, albeit a solution off the top of my head, would to have a java browser. Now, java gui stuff is slow, but is a perfect candidate for what you're talking about. Each html component could have a respective class file, and could be loaded on the fly to display. The web page would be layed out first, and then the component classes would be added in.
It sucks that java's kind of slow on the graphical end though. I'd be willing to help out on a project like this if someone wants to get it started. It makes sense to me, it's totally modular, and could possibly be fairly in size.
Re:The problem is with how browsers are built by Anthony+Kilna · 1999-11-05 02:32 · Score: 1

: I don't know any of the technical details, as I'm
: less of a coder than anything else, but isn't X
: generally a "client-server" display system?

It was XML, not X, the individual was referring to. They are different things entirely.

XML Information
X Windows Information

--
s/[BW]ill(y|iam)?( H\.?)?( G(ate|8)(s|z))?(,? ?v?(III|3)(\.\D)?)?/Girly-man/gi
Re:The problem is with how browsers are built by supz · 1999-11-05 02:44 · Score: 1

So you make it a requirement for plugin makes to include source code with their plugin... if it is some top secret technology that the source code can't be released for them screw them, it shouldnt be on the web... Or some other super intelligent programmer will come along and make their own plugin that handles that 'item' that is top-secret, and he/she will release the source code and blah blah blah.

--
SuPz.orG
Re:The problem is with how browsers are built by Danse · 1999-11-05 02:52 · Score: 1

I don't think you understood him. He said that if Microsoft or anyone else could convince people that they're new pet feature is cool enough, people won't care that other OSes and browsers don't support the feature.

--
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Re:The problem is with how browsers are built by Patrik+Nordebo · 1999-11-05 03:17 · Score: 2

XEmacs had that for years. W3 was the first browser to support CSS (or so they claim). It doesn't do Java or JavaScript, but those are pretty useless anyway. The big problem is that w3 is really slow. Netscape is a speed demon in comparison.
Re:The problem is with how browsers are built by dgoodman · 1999-11-05 03:55 · Score: 1

The page is in dire need of updating and un-ambiguous-izing, but do check out my group's current pet project: Tim
Its written in python. html/xml support is implemented as a series of plugins, not hard coded in. at some point, we'll figure out how to write python wrappers for the netscape plug-in api so 3rd parties can do a re-compile of thier netscape plug-ins for Tim. of course, were still writing the first version: nothing publically available yet. yet. none of us want this to be vapourware...
have fun
Re:The problem is with how browsers are built by silvan · 1999-11-05 04:18 · Score: 1

Maybe they will be downloaded as .DLL's. But the important thing about this plugin-idea is that Linux users can write their own plugin's. And we all know that the Linux community is able to do that for themselves. Coding plugins is certainly a better option that code a whole browser with a graphic engine from the scratch.

--
ciao, Mark m.silvan@gmx.de
Re:The problem is with how browsers are built by doom · 1999-11-05 04:48 · Score: 1

I dunno, I thought that was pretty funny, myself.
Of course, they've been having trouble hacking
support for proportional fonts into emacs, I
have a feeling that graphics is going to be
even further behind (though I'm certainly
beserk enough to use something like that if
it was available).

And as for w3: one of the things I thought
was interesting about that Stallman interview
awhile back is that he mentioned in passing
that he uses lynx. If even RMS leaves emacs
to run a webrowser, there must really be
problems with w3.
Re:The problem is with how browsers are built by .pentai. · 1999-11-05 05:02 · Score: 3

Yes, make that requirement, and watch the companies all flip their collective fingers at the person who says they have to.

Companies will never give up trade secrets. Why? Because the second they do they lose their edge. The second they lose that edge, they're on their way to death. Atleast, that's how they see it.

If people have to do something they don't want in order to support you, it's simple, they won't support you, unless you're microsoft who has a stronghold on the market and multiple billio...err, never mind the buts...
Re:The problem is with how browsers are built by kijiki · 1999-11-05 05:24 · Score: 1

Sigh. This is EXACTLY what java's promise was. Go look at HotJava and the rhetoric about applets when it was first introduced. JITs like IBM's have pretty much removed the performance issues, so the blame is now squarely Sun and Micrsoft's for screwing up crossplatform browsing.
Re:The problem is with how browsers are built by Mattsson · 1999-11-05 05:38 · Score: 1

Then it would be possible to only pre-load support for the most common parts and load the rest on
demand to make a small, fast and slim (small memory footprint) browser.
And if the html-decoding parts were in a library, it would be a breeze to add html support for
windowmanagers, desktopsystems and other apps without having to write it yourself!

--
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
Re:The problem is with how browsers are built by Amit+J.+Patel · 1999-11-05 05:42 · Score: 1

Of course, emacs is so far behind .. that's why I only use XEmacs now. :-) W3 is still too slow, but it's cool seeing graphical pages with proportional fonts, jpg, gif .. in a buffer.
Re:The problem is with how browsers are built by Omnifarious · 1999-11-05 20:31 · Score: 1

This feels like a bad idea, and I can't fully articulate why.

A big part of it is that X is all about 'mechanism, not policy'. Interpretation of HTML falls to hard on the 'policy' side.

Another thing is, this would sort of limit you to having just one browser, the one built into X.

Also, doing it that way doesn't buy you anything extra. You still have to do everything you'd have to do with a non-integrated browser.

Some X terminal vendors attempted to produce 'Net PCs' that were essentially their X terminal with Navigator running locally. But the browser was still a completely seperate application from the X server.

--
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Re:The problem is with how browsers are built by kcarnold · 1999-11-05 22:46 · Score: 1

Has anyone written a DLL wrapper for wine that would work like Ron says for other applications? E-mail me in response.
Re:The problem is with how browsers are built by greenrd · 1999-11-06 00:46 · Score: 1

This feature already exists to an extent. It's called Java. With Java you can put whatever you want on a page, and describe it in whatever way you want, and have it come out exactly the same way on all platforms.
Unfortunately Java doesn't work much at all on Netscape for Linux at the moment, and Blackdown is not top quality. However, rumour has it that Sun are working on a Linux version of Java 2 version 1.3 to be released at the same time as the Sun and Windows 1.3 release, early next year (so they say). This will probably be included with Mozilla distros.
Voila, stable Java VM, code whatever you want into your webpages!
It's not necessarily very efficient way of webauthoring, but if Java page components/renderers were open sourced, reused a lot, intelligently cached by the browser, intelligently compressed (JAR could be improved on greatly), and engineered to download efficiently, you could easily achieve the scenario you describe.

--
Female Prison Rape in NY
Re:The problem is with how browsers are built by greenrd · 1999-11-06 00:59 · Score: 1

Another solution, albeit a solution off the top of my head, would to have a java browser.
No, you don't even need that. *Any* browser with fully-functional java support can be used to extend the browser. Java can be used to design any kind of webpage component you want, already.

--
Female Prison Rape in NY

Dave's got a point, but the plug-ins will come by Bill+Henning · 1999-11-05 01:49 · Score: 2

Dave raises a number of excellent points; but I don't think the situation is quite as bad as he suggests.

The major plugins RealAudio, Flash are now available for Linux (albeit beta for Flash) and other major plugins WILL be ported to Linux - at least if their vendors/proponents want them to survive!

Just look at the Netcraft surveys, Apache OWNS the web server space; and Microsoft just took aim at its other foot - if I read the latest Win2k pricing announcement correctly, in addition to an NTAS license you need a $1995 "unlimited web client" license to run a big web site.

--
--------- Webmaster, http://www.cpureview.com and

Re:Dave's got a point, but the plug-ins will come by jelwell · 1999-11-05 02:04 · Score: 1

Do you remember when Netscape OWNED the browser client space? How long did it take for Microsoft to change all of that? I remember when I first heard that IE had tipped over 50% share.
Joseph Elwell.
Re:Dave's got a point, but the plug-ins will come by toast0 · 1999-11-05 02:31 · Score: 1

They did it by giving away(forcing down throats?) IE.

The point of the prior post was that by charging $2k (or whatever) to be able to serve web pages(not whole story, but i simplify), microsoft is shooting itself in the foot.

--
Need a Catering Connection
Re:Dave's got a point, but the plug-ins will come by Chops-Frozen-Water · 1999-11-05 02:41 · Score: 1

The major plugins RealAudio, Flash are now available for Linux

Not quite true; they are available for Linux/x86. I don't see any of those for Linux/PPC, Linux/SPARC, Linux/Alpha, Linux/other-non-x86. These plugins are a bone being thrown to Linux users to quiet them. There's always going to be an incentive for people to use the dominant platform, which is going to draw more developers to it, which is going to create an incentive to use the dominant platform. See the trend? The solution requires some platform-independent solution so anyone can use it. Unfortunately, I don't know what that should be right now...
--

--
The Future: Some assembly required; batteries not included.

Mozilla needs... integration. by Spyffe · 1999-11-05 01:49 · Score: 1

One of the nice things about IE is its nice extension system. IMHO, ActiveX is superior to the Netscape plugin architecture. Implement something like that for Mozilla, and development of plugins may speed up.

--
Sigmentation fault - core dumped

Re:Mozilla needs... integration. by krusader · 1999-11-05 04:32 · Score: 1

integration is NOT what mozilla needs someone seems to forget that when you installed ie4 on your 95 box it crashed at least every half hour if not more integration is crap... at least done the microsoft way :P

Microsoft won the browser war? by Quintin+Stone · 1999-11-05 01:49 · Score: 1

When did this happen? Last night while I was in one of my trademarked drunken stupors?

--

"Prejudice is wrong; you should hate everyone the same."

Sad but true by pq · 1999-11-05 01:50 · Score: 1

I see the story of "Trish" repeated over and over again - we use Solaris at work, and many (many) sites offer "features" which are simply unavailable for *nix users.

Back when I was still willing to try Barnes and Noble, I remember complaining to them about a broken shopping cart (this after I submitted a credit card number!) - their response at that time was, "well whaddya expect if you aren't using IE on Windows 95??? Go get a life, or at least a Mac!"

So much for Brenners-Lee and his vision of seamless information exchange... How long before there is a usable, portable Mozilla?

--
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."

He's right by Anonymous Coward · 1999-11-05 01:50 · Score: 1

He makes a valid point towards the validity of Linux as a viable choice for a desktop environment. With the internet becoming completely web-centric, the evolution of the browser continues in only one corner: Microsoft. The Mozilla project is playing catchup, and will be for some time to come. By allowing MS to dictate the development of HTML and extensions, open source users (*BSD, Linux alike) are losing. I, for one, will contribute what I can to Netscape alternatives like Mozilla and Opera in the hope that with a large enough market the standards will become more open and platform independant. Of course, the browser doesn't invalidate Linux's ability to be a server platform.

What War? by daviskw · 1999-11-05 01:51 · Score: 1

I own two computers that run both Linux and Windows. My modems don't work on either computer in Linux mode. What should I care what browser I'm using on Linux, I can't even access the WEB from my Linux box.

If you're viewing the Linux issue as an ongoing war with Microsoft, then I have news for you. You've already lost the war. Microsoft already owns the desktop market. Microsoft already owns the browser market. Microsoft already owns the word processor market.

The Linux advantage is not Apache or WEB Browsers or even the WEB. The Linux advantage is that it offers a choice. As Linux gets better, the choice becomes easier. As more people move toward a Linux environment, and Linux becomes more stable, the choice gets easier. As Microsoft continues to dink with their cost structure, and Linux continues to be free, the choice gets easier.

Oh, and don't worry about those sites that offer browser specific implementations, in a world where sites make money based upon access, any company denying service because of browser based incompatabilities is shooting itself in the foot.

--
Beware the wood elf!!!

Re:What War? by finkployd · 1999-11-05 02:33 · Score: 1

These wouldn't be cheap, WINmodems would they? Then you get what you pay for. An unstable, slow software based modem that doesn't work under any alternative OS.

As for the war, we are winning. Sure MS has the desktop morket now, but we are improving at a much faster rate than they CAN, assuming they were trying to improve (which I haven't seen any sign of since DOS 6.0)

Finkployd
Re:What War? by Greg+W. · 1999-11-05 02:55 · Score: 1

My modems don't work on either computer in Linux mode.

You do not own any modems, then. All modems work with Linux, as long as they support standard RS-232 serial connections and (for most apps) the Hayes command set.

A WinModem is not a modem.

(I'm not quite sure whether I'm willing to consider an "internal modem" a modem, either. Internal modems are just yucky.)
Re:What War? by Analog · 1999-11-05 03:15 · Score: 2

This is the first comment I've seen (including the main story) that is taking a realistic look at things.
It is Microsoft's market share that is currently being drained away in all areas but browser; when you're on top, there's nowhere to go but down. As for the browser, the numbers that show IE's total dominance in this area these days are well cooked; I would say that > 70% of the people I know who use Windows still use Netscape.
Considering that a huge chunk of the web browsing populace is still using what is basically a 2+ year old browser despite the fact that a newer one is bolted right into their operating system makes me worry far more for Microsoft's future than Linux or Mozilla's. Don't get me wrong, the ability to go down the drain into obscurity is well within Mozilla's grasp; I don't accept, however, that it's imminent.
As for Linux itself, it's gone over critical mass. It's not going anywhere, and I don't care what Microsoft has to say about it. I have the ability to look at the evidence myself, and what I see lets me rest easy indeed.
Re:What War? by zosima · 1999-11-05 05:49 · Score: 1

If it takes 3 times as long to develop and test for one cranky platform that a small and easily discardable percentage of users have, it's much cheaper to lose their business

Okay, just about anyone can crank out simple html capable of being viewed on any STANDARD browser with all important content very quickly. It is companies hell-bent on "cute" pointless java and closed extensions that are losing business and wasting there own time. Sorry, but it is easier, more effecient, and cleaner to just create basic html, and maybe CGI if you need it. It takes more than 3x as long to develop all the aforementioned extensions that makes things incompatable. Personally, I just boycott all those crap sites anyways, most of those web developers don't have a clue what they are doing, and I have yet to see one with worthwhile content. Let them lose business.

Tim Berners-Lee Wept by Bander · 1999-11-05 01:52 · Score: 1

It never occured to me that the "proprietizing" of the Web was a direct threat to Linux. Is there anyone out there who can mount an effective response to the problem?

Tim and the W3C seem like voices in the wilderness -- why doesn't anyone listen to the guy who "invented" the Web?

Sigh...

Nick Vargish

--
What we need more of is science!

Re:Tim Berners-Lee Wept by YeOldeGnurd · 1999-11-05 02:41 · Score: 1

why doesn't anyone listen to the guy who "invented" the Web?
No need to put wuotes around that word invented there. I'd say that defining the URL notation, creating HTML as a usable mini-SGML, and of course specifying HTTP pretty much covers all the bases. Sure, others have embraced and extended and refined and toyed around with the web, but I've never heard anyone deny that Sir Tim definitively invented the web.

Bravery, Kindness, Clarity, Honesty, Compassion, Generosity

--
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...

The desktop war perhaps... by otis+wildflower · 1999-11-05 01:54 · Score: 5

... And while many of us kinda laugh at the idea of linux desktops for the masses, I feel in terms of political freedom it's probably the most critical front.

All I can suggest is:

Send a polite but unambiguous note to the webmaster of any standards-noncompliant site informing them that because of their decision to break standards you will not be able to use their site in any way, and that you will never install a browser or software that supports their standards-noncompliant components. If it's a commerce site, let them know you will be taking your business elsewhere, and if they have a B&M component let them know you'll seriously consider taking your business elsewhere IRL as well.
Consider informing various advocate groups for people with disabilities, as if the site can't be used with Linux it probably can't be used with a browser that provides support for sight-impaired netizens. I bet that the junk which breaks Linux Netscape also breaks Lynx...

The only way we're going to break moron webmonkeys out of using noncompatible junk is to be a large enough audience to affect their planning. If we join forces with our differently-abled brothers and sisters, perhaps we can force the issue! ;)

And I wonder if a boycott proxy would be helpful?

Your Working Boy,

Re:The desktop war perhaps... by scrytch · 1999-11-05 23:11 · Score: 2

Holy crap if I were a webmaster I wouldn't read past sentence 1 of such an insufferably superior attitude.

How about: "I'm trying to read your page with on . It's broken, such and such doesn't render properly. Looks like you have an unclosed table tag [or whatever is the problem]. Could you please fix it? Thanks from a potential paying customer."

Just because you're right doesn't mean you have to be righteous.

--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Re:The desktop war perhaps... by otis+wildflower · 1999-11-06 10:22 · Score: 1

Holy crap if I were a webmaster I wouldn't read past sentence 1 of such an insufferably superior attitude

Well, I'm a sysadmin, and as such I am entitled if not required to have an insufferably superior attitude.. Comes with root password.. (and staying up until 4:30 on a sunday trying to figure out which jackas^H^H^H^H^H^Hcustomer started advertising pr0n)

How about: "I'm trying to read your page with on . It's broken, such and such doesn't render properly. Looks like you have an unclosed table tag [or whatever is the problem]. Could you please fix it? Thanks from a potential paying customer."

Big difference between badly-formatted HTML and using a POS 'extension' that simply cannot be made usable for many users. What would the webmaster say to the Linux user, or the vision-impaired user, who can't make any use of their site because it was coded in CraptiveX or Flash or Shockwave or whatever other gimcrackery that's not appropriately cross-platform? 7 out of 10 dentists agree that the webmaster would condescendingly say 'update your browser'..

Just because you're right doesn't mean you have to be righteous.

It only sounds righteous because it hits a little too close, methinks.. The point is, cross-platform compatibility should be considered among the principal design criteria of any popular website. If not because you wish to alienate as few potential viewers as possible, then possibly to avoid legal action.

Note for our non-US friends: in the US, it's becoming very interesting to see what kind of prosecution will occur because of flashy sites not being compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. That act, passed largely to make sure publicly-available facilities are accessible by differently-abled citizens (adding ramps and/or elevators for wheelchairs, larger-print and/or braille menus in restaurants, and many other changes to building codes and other areas of life), may be applicable to websites publicly available and hosted in the US. So, in theory, any public website in the US needs to be compatible with a vision-impaired web browser (such as Lynx). Of course wags make snide jokes about advocates for the hearing-impaired suing radio stations but the idea (at least for the web) has merit IMO, as any information should be made available to the widest possible audience, and with the internet as a medium of communication metastasizing in importance it is crucial to include as many people as possible regardless of race, creed, economics, gender, disability, etc.

I find it interesting that geeks and the visually impaired have web design preferences in common: minimal 'stylistic' changes, only markup to represent various emphases in the data..
Your Working Boy,

Re:Ouch! by arcade · 1999-11-05 01:54 · Score: 1

Hey, while they're at it, why doesn't Mozilla through a couple options in there that M$ doesn't have?

Because we are the good guys. We follow the standards. Microsoft make their own.

--

--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca

The Cavalry is coming over the hill! by SurfsUp · 1999-11-05 01:55 · Score: 1

Mozilla milestone M11 is apparently due out on tuesday. The milestone M10 was pretty darn near useable - I used it for a few hours until the unfinished state of the text edit fields finally stopped me. I wouldn't be surprised if M11 is a keeper.

The source code is 20 something Meg. Grab. Download. Build. Fix. :-)

--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.

Re:The Cavalry is coming over the hill! by Abigail-II · 1999-11-05 23:49 · Score: 1

Mozilla milestone M11 is apparently due out on tuesday.
Given that's based on the shit Netscape produced, can Mozilla parse HTML 2? Netscape was never able to do that.
-- Abigail

Losing the war for the DESKTOP by ArthurDent · 1999-11-05 01:55 · Score: 1

I have had the same problems using Linux (and other unices as well like HP, SGI etc.) Netscape is rather unstable (though it is getting better), and you just don't have the plugins to do some of the cool stuff that you can with Windows.

Linux will not lose the long term war over this short term battle. This problem is largely a desktop market problem not a server market problem. I don't think that there are too many arguements against the fact that Linux just isn't ready for the desktop yet.

Hopefully sometime in the future that will start to be less true, and then and only then should we even *expect* plugin companies to develop for Linux.

Mozilla as I understand it is progressing, and if it turns out not to be vaporware, should go a long way to giving Linux a stable browser.

In short, this is just a symptom of the larger problem of Linux not being ready for the desktop. Never fear. This will resolve itself.

Ben

Re:Love means never saying "Want the Xtended warra by JabberWokky · 1999-11-05 01:55 · Score: 1

Yeah, but you should have seen the End User License that she made him agree to.

--
Evan E.

--
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien

This ain't just about browsers... by Enoch+Root · 1999-11-05 01:55 · Score: 1

This feature describes a reaction to Linux that goes far beyond the browser battle. Simply, I don't think the "Browser War" will make or break Linux, but I believe there is a lot to learn about it if we want Linux to continue to grow.

Let's face it, Linux is fighting an uphill battle. Programmers have to include features in their applications that appear in MS applications, while the reverse is not true: before switching to Linux, people will complain that they'll lose features they're accustomed to in Microsoft Office, for instance. But when you tell them about the features of, say, Star Office, they'll merely consider them carefully and judge their merits.

This is why Mozilla can't strike back, for instance, by putting features of their own that are not supported by Internet Explorer. People would just hesitate to consider that technology, because they figure the majority out there wouldn't be able to use it anyway.

So what's the solution? I'm not sure. I think Linux needs to keep fighting the uphill battle until it has common ground. Then, the battle will be one of features, where the best features will win.

It is true that a very good browser for Linux would be one of these fabled "killer apps". Unfortunately, I don't think it's Mozilla. I think Linux needs more browser projects than it needs office projects right now. I don't know why energy is not being put more into creating a slew of unique browsers, then putting these resources in common.

It's doable... Linux developpers have done it or are doing it for everything else. I'm sure no one expected the quality Office suites looming on the horizon or already in place for Linux. And I figure it must be more complicated to build a complete, integrated Office suite than a Web browser, no?

"Knowledge = Power = Energy = Mass"

Re:Ouch! by bmetzler · 1999-11-05 01:55 · Score: 1

Hey, while they're at it, why doesn't Mozilla through a couple options in there that M$ doesn't have?

They are. Chat, terminal client, another chat client. What else? there must be more...

-Brent
--

Amen! by SteveSgt · 1999-11-05 01:55 · Score: 1

(The subject says it all.)

accessible site design by Mr.+Slippery · 1999-11-05 01:55 · Score: 2

Yes, it would be good to put more effort into Mozilla. I do hearby promise that when my new (well, used 266-K6, but it's newer than my current P-90) box comes and I get Linux up on it, I will put Mozilla on it and at least help with testing.

But, if web designers are stupid enough to design pages that only render in one browser, or even worse require plug-ins, I'm not sure that Mozilla will help.

We need to keep reminding content providers that there are people using other browsers than IE on Win - there's Opera, Netscape, Mozilla and Lynx being run on Macs, BeOS boxes, and various flavors of Unix, as well as the coming PDAs with browsing capabilities. Forty lashes with a cat5 cable for any web author who depends on proprietary extensions - if you want to say something, why in the world would you restrict who can hear it??

Hopefully, the accessibility lawsuit against AOL will help inspire more broswer neutral, universally accessible web site design.

--
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood

Re:accessible site design by Chase · 1999-11-05 02:10 · Score: 2

As an internet software developer I think I can answer your question.

When we begin a development project we put together the requirements for the software we need to write. Over time our customers have started to demand features that are generally only accessable to you via a fat application. Those features are available to you in web browsers but only if you target a particular browser. Example: DHTML -- This is a great step forward in what is possible on a browser but unfortunatly Netscape and Microsoft implement the language differently. This mean we have to make a choice for our first release and many times our first release becomes the only release. In the case of DHTML Microsoft is closer to the W3C standard than Netscape so we choose MS. Better to go with the standard and hope that Netscape moves that way than implement the non-standard version and hope that Netscape doesn't standarize.

Its a complicated and often argued topic.

--
-==-
Re:accessible site design by Pyr · 1999-11-05 02:31 · Score: 2

I'm a webmaster myself, and it's frankly BS to say that you have to choose one browser over the other, and just give up the other one as a lost hope. It's very easy to make a site that works in both browsers if you know what you're doing.. and although there are extra features like DHTML that aren't consistent between browsers, you CAN find code that works in both, or at least code that degrades gracefully so other browsers can still see it. There's elements of my site that only work in IE, but the site still functions perfectly in Netscape.. netscape users just can't see some of the extra unnecessary glitter.

As for MS owning 99% of the browser market as mentioned in the feature, I'll check my server stats. http://www.heli-cal.com from last Tuesday got 112 hits from people using IE, 109 using Netscape, and about 200 using something else (mostly search engine bots). This site is a perfectly typical business site.

The truth, plain and simple, is that if people rely on features unique to only one browser for their site to work, they're lazy, unprofessional, and shouldn't be in the web design business.

And if Mr. Whitinger's wife really wants windows, let her have it. After about a week of using Windows and IE she'll realize that only a small handful of Netscape crashes in the last couple months is nothing at all.
Re:accessible site design by earache · 1999-11-05 02:56 · Score: 1

Huh?

You're implying netscape is more solid then IE? Brother give me a break. In spreading the gospel it's important not to dillute the facts about which is more stable/feature rich/fast as a browser.

Nutscrape ain't it.

What is going to kill linux is a lack of vision and trading ease of use over nerdy utilitarian bullshit. Most "unnecessary glitter" in web pages is there for a purpose, either extending the user experience, simplifying navigation or adding character and context to a site.

Browsers aren't going to kill linux, the people developing applications for it will!

- the sinister mister earache.

standards standards standards by plaiddragon · 1999-11-05 01:56 · Score: 1

Its all about the standards. Maybe they shouldn't be called that--since nobody treats them as such.

Any thing used on the web should be open source. That's the only way it will work.

Although...If /. was only viewable from linux...hey maybe thats an idea. just kidding.

--
* * * --they cant all be your best, that would be confusing

I hate articles like this one... by daVinci1980 · 1999-11-05 01:57 · Score: 3

... That seem to think that one aspect of Linux can cause us to lose the "war" with Windows. To most of us linux users, its not a war to begin with. I could care less if others use Linux, I know that I can use it, it takes care of my needs, and I never have to reboot my machine. If there is a Desktop war going on, I wonder who's fighting? MS certainly sees us as a threat, but we couldn't care less about them.

Upon further investigation, it turns out that Netscape apparantly did not "like" the Java code that was being incorporated into one of the websites that Trish frequents. My solution: Turn off Java.
I have yet to come upon any problems after extensive testing of Netscape with thousands of pages loaded with Java. There was an initial misconfiguration of Netscape, (actually X) wherein a necessary font for Java was not installed by default, but once installed, I haven't hit any pages with Java which were unviewable.

Then Microsoft created Internet Explorer. Then Microsoft won the "Browser War". Then webmasters began using some of the "advanced" features of Internet Explorer, shutting out Netscape users.
Again, with the ignorance. MS has hardly won the browser war. The problem with many authors of Tech articles today is that they don't understand the computer market AT ALL. They continue to naively think that just because some particular product doesn't have market share in one particular market, then it must not have market share in ANY market. The fact is that Netscape STILL dominates the Browser war for two reasons:
1) Companies use netscape on all their UNIX boxes.
2) Companies use netscape on all their Win95 boxes. IE wasn't free when the majority of companies purchased their licenses, and Netscape continues to dominate the market share in the commercial sector, which is roughly twice the size of the personal or private sector.(After all, everyone who works in virtually any white collar job has at least one machine they have at work, but not all of them have PCs at home.

If we fail, we will lose the war.
We're not at war.

If we fail, we will lose the war.
We're not at war.

If we fail, we will lose the war.
We're not at war.

If we fail, we will lose the war.
We're not at war.

When comparing M$ Windows to Linux, let us consider an analogy. You see Windows is kind of like a Trojan horse. Sure, it looks all big and impressive, and when you bring it inside the walls, it opens up and bites you in the rear end.

But linux is like a Juggernaut to the Trojan horse. Every day it gets bigger, more robust, and more difficult to stop. Eventually MS will have to bow out to Linux not because Linux will declare war on Windows, but because Windows will simply pale in comparison.

You see, one of the most important differences between Windows and Linux is that Windows is all smoke and mirrors (marketing) whereas Linux is an product that is actually well made and capable of delivering on its promises. The public will grow tired of the illusion sooner or later, its all a matter of time.
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."

--
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.

Re:I hate articles like this one... by evilpenguin · 1999-11-05 02:50 · Score: 2

To this one I can only say, "Say Amen, somebody!"

Work on Mozilla if you want to (how's the license, by the way? Does it meet snuff of can Netscape/AOL take it back any time they want?), but as a developer of web based applications, I think anyone who makes a site that won't work with an HTML 3.0 compliant browser at least to the point of all content being readable is being negligent.

HTML emphasizes content over form. The web should continue to do so. I have to admit that I wasn't fond of image maps, frames, or javascript. Even so, there are a host of simple techniques for making rich sites play nice with less capable browsers.

Standards, folks, standards!
Re:I hate articles like this one... by bhirt · 1999-11-05 03:20 · Score: 1

daVinci1980,

Netscape does not dominate the market. Just get an agentlog report of any popular website. Most people use IE. I would be suprised if a majority of slashdot readers use netscape. Netscape DOES crash a lot. I wish IE existed for Linux because it is so much more stable than Netscape. There ARE java apps that DO crash Netscape.

Linux will have a huge setback if Netscape dies a slow silent death. Even if Mozilla is ever released, there are still all of the other problems that make it hard for linux users to browse leading edge websites. Lack of a stable RealPlay G2, No active Movie, no quicktime, limited and unstable plugins. I think you are being blind here.

--
-- The world's most ambitious and comprehensive PC game database project. http://www.mobygam
Re:I hate articles like this one... by svp266 · 1999-11-05 03:22 · Score: 1

You see, one of the most important differences between Windows and Linux is that Windows is all smoke and mirrors (marketing) whereas Linux is an product that is actually well made and capable of delivering on its promises. The public will grow tired of the illusion sooner or later, its all a matter of time. I hear Sony still says that about the Beta VCR. svp266
Re:I hate articles like this one... by Wumpus · 1999-11-05 03:25 · Score: 2

... That seem to think that one aspect of Linux can cause us to lose the "war" with Windows. To most of us linux users, its not a war to begin with. I could care less if
others use Linux, I know that I can use it, it takes care of my needs, and I never have to reboot my machine. If there is a Desktop war going on, I wonder who's fighting?
MS certainly sees us as a threat, but we couldn't care less about them.

You should care whether others are using Linux. Without a large user base, there will be nothing to stop the industry from making all hardware proprietary. Today, if you use Linux, you know that you can't use Winmodems, some high end sound cards, some really expansive, professional 3D cards, but that's pretty much it. None of this is something you can't live without. However, if Linux won't have a large user base, there will be no market forces that can force hardware manufacturers to open their hardware specs. If, five years from now, the average PC will have 90% proprietary hardware, with drivers protected by patents, you won't have a machine to run your free operating system on.

Do you seriously think that Crative Labs or NVidia care about Free Software, or Open Source? As public companies, they care about their bottom lines, and nothing else. If Linux has a large user base, they open up their hardware specs, and you have sound support in the kernel. If nobody uses Linux (or any other free operating system, for that matter), they have no reason to open their drivers, or to publish hardware specs. On the contrary - to be competative, they will obtain patents for every last detail of their hardware and software, effectively preventing any Free code from supporting their hardware.

This is an important issue, and one that many Linux users fail to understand. A substantial user base is essential, not to us "winning" anything, but to Linux being a viable platform for commodity hardware. Without easy access to affordable Linux workstations, there won't be a Linux.

As for the "war" with Microsoft, you may not think you're that Linux is at war with Microsoft. That doesn't change the fact that Linux poses a threat to Windows's dominant position on the desktop, and therefore to Microsoft's profits. Call it whatever you want, I'll bet they're calling it War.
Re:I hate articles like this one... by grumpy_geek · 1999-11-05 03:30 · Score: 1

I agree... well partially :)

We are not at war, every app has it's use; I think most people will admin that IE does not currently have an equal in it's ability (what the future may hold is another matter). Whether Microsoft makes an app does not make it evil just an alternative ,like KDE & GNOME alternatives of each other (if I may blaspheme putting those in with Microsoft).

On the bowing out issue... I'd almost agree except it doesn't (or hasn't) quite work in real life. The fact of all of the other OS's there are, that are more robost than Windows. Solaris, Irix they have consistently proven themselves to be a much more robust product than windows. Pretty much anybody who has run both windows and a unix platform will tell you (for some you might have to prod a bit) that NT isn't able to go CPU to CPU against Solaris, Irix, etc. and pretty much does pale in comparison; but many of those same people are still installing it in their enterprise. For a good example look at how quickly NT ransacked Novel of most of it's clients (it's still hanging on though). Novel does a MUCH better job at file serving and print serving, but people time and again go for the glitter even though it burns them; and the silliest thing is they keep going back and get burned, probably one of the biggest paradoxes that I know of, it tends to defy logic.

A solution, well I wish I had one...
Re:I hate articles like this one... by Nathaniel · 1999-11-05 04:11 · Score: 1

Without a large user base, there will be nothing to stop the industry from making all hardware proprietary.
Perhaps you can tell me why Micro Channel is a historical footnote. It certainly isn't because of Linux.
Providing support for Linux is becoming SOP. The Linux share of the market would have to dwindle quite a bit before any companies decide to stop providing support once they's started doing so.
However, if Linux won't have a large user base, there will be no market forces that can force hardware manufacturers to open their hardware specs.
Why is it that this problem didn't keep Linus from getting started in the first place? Perhaps because it's not nearly as serious as you think at is.
Granted, a large userbase is required to insure that hardware manufactures provide Linux support from the moment they release new hardware, but there is nothing that will keep us from finding compatible hardware and running Linux on it.
The war, if you choose to think of it that way, is about making sure that even a clueless Linux newbie can easily installed brand new, high end, hardware and expect it to work.
Re:I hate articles like this one... by Starselbrg · 1999-11-05 04:16 · Score: 1

I could care less if others use Linux, I know that I can use it, it takes care of my needs,
Did you read the posted article? Then you must have missed a lot. The author's point is that if MS gains enough [market|mind]share in the world, they would be able to extend HTTP. If that happens they would be able to lock Linux users out of the Web. Then would Linux take care of your needs? If you couldn't use the web?
If your really care about having a useable desktop, then you really *should* care about Mozilla and, yes, even fighting the "War".

--
Got HTML? Want LaTeX? Try html2latex
Re:I hate articles like this one... by Ichoran · 1999-11-05 05:56 · Score: 1

I could care less if others use Linux, I know that I can use it, it takes care of my needs, and I never have to reboot my machine.
Suppose your needs include doing useful things on the web like viewing streaming video, running java applets, and such. And your OS has no software to support it. Is it taking care of your needs? Not in that respect. You go use a machine with another OS.
I have yet to come upon any problems after extensive testing of Netscape with thousands of pages loaded with Java.
And do you know why? It's because people have gone to great pains to make sure that the Java runs on the buggy browsers of most operating systems. I've been working on a Java app for molecular modeling and on Linux, NS crashes after about two seconds of trying to rotate the model. The code is fine. NS is buggy. Can I use Linux to view models? No. I use the Win98 machine next to it instead. (Ha--I still compile to bytecode under Linux though!) Besides which, I've hit a half dozen Java applets that didn't work. The stupid simple ones tend to work; the slightly involved ones tend to crash.
You see, one of the most important differences between Windows and Linux is that Windows is all smoke and mirrors (marketing) whereas Linux is an product that is actually well made and capable of delivering on its promises.
Who is delivering working Java 2 support, 3D graphics, streaming sound/video/etc., effortless DVD playback, and so on, right now? Windows. This doesn't mean that Linux can't do it better, just that it doesn't do it now. And now is important. Now is when I'm trying to do something.
Re:I hate articles like this one... by Surak · 1999-11-05 05:58 · Score: 2

1) Companies use netscape on all their UNIX boxes.
2) Companies use netscape on all their Win95 boxes. IE wasn't free when the majority of companies purchased their licenses, and Netscape continues to dominate the market share in the commercial sector, which is roughly twice the size of the personal or private sector.(After all, everyone who works in virtually any white collar job has at least one machine they have at work, but not all of them have PCs at home.

You're missing something key here: the Web is increasingly become a consumer mainstay. what companies have at work will only be relevant for business-to-business transactions. The consumer has traditionally ruled the markets. Look at how hardware companies have twisted themselves into a pretzel to attract the first time consumer buyer.

We're not at war.

Tell that to Bill Gates.

--
My journal has hot /. gossip.
Re:I hate articles like this one... by Wumpus · 1999-11-05 06:39 · Score: 1

Perhaps you can tell me why Micro Channel is a historical footnote. It certainly isn't because of Linux.

I don't know. I don't know what IBM's licensing terms were for MCA. I don't think this is relevant to what's happening now.

I agree that the industry benefits from open standards, but a standard that's open enough for the industry may not be open enough for Free Software. The MPEG standard is open, but encumbered. That's not really a problem if you're a company that makes MPEG analyzers for the cable TV industry, or if you're selling a digital TV settop box. It is a problem if you want to write a free MPEG encoder, and release the source under the GPL.

Granted, a large userbase is required to insure that hardware manufactures provide Linux support from the moment they release new hardware, but there is nothing that will keep us from finding compatible hardware and running Linux on it.

If compatible hardware is either unavailable, or outdated, is that really a choise? How much functionality are you willing to sacrifice just to run a Free operating system? A lot of people don't care whether they get DVD support or not. That's reasonable. Sound support may not be an issue for most Linux users. Where do you get to the point where Linux is only useful as a platform on which you can develop the Linux kernel, and as an embedded system, but that's it?

Linux has excellent hardware support today because it has a large enough user base to make a difference in hardware manufacturers' bottom line. This is more evident where Linux has a really large user base - can you show me a SCSI controller without Linux support? Do you think this is a coincidence, or could it have something to do with Linux's substantial presence in the server market?

The war, if you choose to think of it that way, is about making sure that even a clueless Linux newbie can easily installed brand new, high end, hardware and expect it to work.

To put it differently, the war is on open standards, for hardware and communications protocols. That includes HTML, and browser plugins. Linux has to support most web content for your clueless newbie to have a reason to install Linux in the first place.

I'm not advocating Linux dominance on the desktop - just a sufficient presence to make a difference in the marketplace.
Re:I hate articles like this one... by SEE · 1999-11-05 12:22 · Score: 1

How's the license, by the way? Does it meet snuff of can Netscape/AOL take it back any time they want?

RMS says it's Free Software. ESR says it's Open Source Software. The revocation clause was killed before any source was released in a public debate over the license beta. It can't be combined with GPL source, though, so don't mix the code!

Mozilla won't solve many of those problems by Admiral+Burrito · 1999-11-05 01:58 · Score: 1

Mozilla, once completed, should provide us with a stable and efficient web browser. But many of the problems described will remain.

There will still be Windows-only plugins, IE HTML extensions, polluted Java, etc.

The only way to solve this is to convince everyone that "cross-platform" is good, and that Microsoft is completely proprietary (read: bad) and not a "standard" the way many people like to think MS is.

Getting involved with Mozilla. by jelwell · 1999-11-05 01:58 · Score: 2

Mozilla has a whole page devoted on how to get involved. Get Involved!
I, myself download the milestones and then report bugs I find. It's really easy to do, and most people could probably replace their current browser with Mozilla. (however there is no SSL support -- encryption export problems on source code).

Don't be afraid to help out for windows either. Mozilla isn't going to release on windows only -it's a cross platform development. So if you report bugs for the windows or mac (others too) versions then you're still helping out Linux as well as the rest.

Mozilla has a lot of room for helping hands, in paticular bug reporting, testing, and documentation writing. For the more technically advanced: code writing and bug fixing.
Do your part!
Joseph Elwell.

Re:Getting involved with Mozilla. by Compuser · 1999-11-05 05:45 · Score: 1

This article was timely because M11
is about to come out, with an alpha
version of Mozilla soon thereafter.

Usable Portable Mozilla by Ken+Broadfoot · 1999-11-05 01:58 · Score: 1

The first part: Usable is what we are waiting for. The second part (portable) is part of the project and probably won't be a problem.

--
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!

Those are some good points. by Planetes · 1999-11-05 01:59 · Score: 1

I noticed the Java problem (particularly with Javascript) a long time ago and just accepted it. We can't afford to 'accept' things as status-quo anymore. One question though, is Navigator/Mozilla even worth the effort? Would it be easier/better/faster just to start over? An open source CVS project in the same vein as the kernel itself? One command team controlling it and everybody donating patches? Just some thoughts. I'm seriously considering starting over and writing a open source browser but I'd like opinions first.

--
Planetes
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promo Ad
"Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer" - Adolf Hitl

Re:Those are some good points. by abram_fettig · 1999-11-05 02:51 · Score: 1

Actually, the Mozilla project did start over. That's why this project has taken so long. They have created, from scratch, a very usable, standards compliant, cross-platform browser. In fact, they have brought cross-platform to a whole new level. Mozilla includes a customizable UI that uses it's own widgets, rather than those of the OS. That way a web page with text boxes, scroll bars, and buttons should look the same on Linux, Windows, and Mac.
And that's just one of the nice features Mozilla has to offer. Go check out the Mozilla advocacy site and be impressed.

Sad but true. by skelly · 1999-11-05 02:00 · Score: 1

We do need a way to keep certain standards on the Net from being "embraced and extended" by proprietary code. Here is a hint. If some Linux developer could taken on helping the Mozilla project and get other companies to do Linux versions of their web applications, then we may just stop this war and keep the net an open forum for speech and software standards.

--
Romanes eunt domus? People called Romanes, they go the 'ouse? It says Romans go home. No it doesn't. What's Latin fo

It's not just plugins by Wooly-Mammoth · 1999-11-05 02:00 · Score: 1

Yahoo has been adding a bunch of new features that run only on the Windows and Mac (Yahoo Companion, instant messaging client). Sure, you can get the basic functions with java and html, but I suspect their Windows version has extras that are gradually becoming lockins. I guess this is the MS masterplan - make their platform indispensable, so that even if Yahoo is used on small clients, it can use WinCE or whatever. Basically, Windows everywhere, and they are gradually doing this, mainly coz the alternatives never succeeded (Java isn't hitting the mark anymore.)

Will making a snappy Mozilla convince Yahoo, excite, and all the other big sites to not use Windows add-ons? I don't think so. Everybody caters to the mom-and-pop market, and unless there's a massively good alternative that will make Yahoo re-think its windows focus and follow universal standards, they will continue to do so, because they know 200 million people use Windows, and it's easier to just build on top of it. Mozilla won't make any difference unless it has an impact on the sites catering to the teenagers, home users, kids, etc. etc. It will just become a lynx like geek toy with us whining about how nobody is following standards.

I'm not sure what "power feature" alternative there is, but I doubt mozilla will spread all over to mainstream sites at this point.

BTW, for the netscape crashing on java, I too have java disabled, but an AC provided the answer on an earlier /. post, the star wars ASCIImation thingie:

Java under netscape in stock Redhat 6 (Score:5)
by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 22, @11:08AM EDT (#330)
I had the problem with netscape crashing. It seems you need to load *all* the font RPMs.

rpm -i XFree86-100dpi-fonts-3.3.3.1-49.i386.rpm
rpm -i XFree86-75dpi-fonts-3.3.3.1-49.i386.rpm
rpm -i XFree86-ISO8859-2-100dpi-fonts-1.0-8.noarch.rpm
rpm -i XFree86-ISO8859-2-75dpi-fonts-1.0-8.noarch.rpm
rpm -i XFree86-ISO8859-2-Type1-fonts-1.0-8.noarch.rpm
rpm -i XFree86-ISO8859-9-100dpi-fonts-2.1.2-9.noarch.rpm
rpm -i XFree86-ISO8859-9-75dpi-fonts-2.1.2-9.noarch.rpm
rpm -i XFree86-cyrillic-fonts-3.3.3.1-49.i386.rpm
rpm -i chkfontpath-1.4.1-1.i386.rpm
rpm -i ghostscript-fonts-5.10-3.noarch.rpm
[

hope this helps

http://slashdot.org/articles/99/05/22/1341217.sh tml

w/m

--
-- I'm not a freak show, I'm a mammal. --

Re:It's not just plugins by bofh23 · 1999-11-05 10:10 · Score: 1

Yahoo has been adding a bunch of new features that run only on the Windows and Mac [...]

I think Yahoo! is a great example of a site that makes its content accessible to all browsers. Especially, when chrome is the norm.

--
"Yeah well ... The Dude abides."

The Other Side of the Coin... by bsletten · 1999-11-05 02:00 · Score: 1

Is to alert Webmasters who use these extensions that you would like to take advantage of their services, but they have made a choice that prevents you from doing so. Not all will care. Some will. If enough people say this politely, they may get the picture.

yes but... by josepha48 · 1999-11-05 02:01 · Score: 1

IE 5.0 and netscape 4.x do not work the same. Yes that is obvious. But does anyone know how obvious> It goes beyond plugins too. IE 5.0 does not comply with the standards fully. I have code that was created as per documentation on how to use layers. I then viewed this page under Netscape. All was fine eveything showed up just fine. I view it under IE 5.0 and the layers lloose there properties that were set in my style sheet that I took so much time to work on. That sucks!

The problems do not stop there thou. VBscript is another issue altogether. I have had the same problems mentioned in this article and plain and simplely Here is my feeling:

If you create a website that is 'browser' specifiic on the web, you have lost my attention.

It is one thing to require a browser that adheres to newer standards, like table in tables (HTML4.0), but to block out users and redirect them to another page cause they do not have IE adn windows is just wrong!

Why in a world that is so divers in its cultures and populus, should I be FORCED to use XXX OS with YYY browser?

Truthfully, I do boycott browser specific sites.

send flames > /dev/null

--

Only 'flamers' flame!

If we luse. by Forge · 1999-11-05 02:01 · Score: 1

Before you all start blabbering about why this or that doesn't really matter and how software freedom means being able to choose the best application / platform for each Job. Here is how it works in real life.

You cannot run an Office without at least a Windows machine for simply reading MSWord docs being sent to you by "Early deployment partners" and other miscellaneous offices that have standardized on "MS Office". As is home users and servers can get around the problem by not doing business with any of those people.

If the same kind of dominance is brought to bear on web standards then the only desktop useable for browsing will be MSIE on Windows 2000/98. Once MS has the browsing client sewn up then it will be trivial to make that client incompatible with all servers but IE on Win2K.

that scenario means that all you ISPs ( I know a lot of you read Slashdot ) will have to take down whatever server you like and currently use and install Win2K with it's "browser access licenses" and whatever limitations it may have for your specific application.

So yes. The browser client is critical, simply for keeping the ground we already have and keeping the web and open platform where some sun starved geek can write a server that actually works without paying licenses for applicable patents/copyrights.

The MS Office suite filters are the next target but a secondary one since that will be to win ground that already belongs to a proprietary format. It's called leverage and we must get and use it because the other goy ( MS for now, Novel, SCO or AOL latter ) will not accept slicing up the market between "equal players" as any kind of option. They each want it all.

--
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?

Re:Love means never saying "Want the Xtended warra by mattreilly · 1999-11-05 02:01 · Score: 1

I agree. Girlfriend, you probably could have done better.

cheers,

Matthew Reilly

If we fail, we will lose the war by Primer · 1999-11-05 02:01 · Score: 1

Wow, I can't agree enough. Talk about a wake up call. I think I'll go to mozilla's web site and sign to do what I can to prevent this catastrophe. This is a war we cannot lose!

-- If we fail, we will lose the war

--
This is necessary...life, feeds on life...

The tide will turn.... by Kris+Warkentin · 1999-11-05 02:03 · Score: 1

This is the main reason that I hesitate to install Linux on non-tech people's computers. Personally, if something doesn't work, I just go to another site but most people will not tolerate that.

I notice that IIS has gained ground on Apache lately but we still have >50% of the market. With Micro$oft's new seat-based pricing on web-server authentication (starting with win2k i think?), IIS may not seem to be such an attractive choice for long.

We have more and more companies supporting the web through Linux - witness the new server side Java support from Sun for Apache - so these plugins will come for the browsers too. I'm not advocatiing apathy but on the other hand, I think that the swing towards Linux and the backlash against Micro$oft is not even close to being finished yet.

We've more users every day and if 20 million motherboards are going to have Corel Linux with them, we just may see consumer demand for interoperability reach new heights. Linux was started by geeks and nerds but it's the consumers who will make the companies take us seriously.... Soundblaster Live driver anyone?

--

In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.

Re:The tide will turn.... by Last+Warrior · 1999-11-05 06:27 · Score: 1

In order to have answers to the future you have to look to the past. look how other companies came in as the underdogs and overtook seemingly untouchable competitors. back in the early 80'sthere was a company called Adlib. They were a sound card maker for those of who dont have this much history. competing with this company seemed impossible and Adlib owned the entire market for years. even the small company Creative labs could nto compete with with adlib because of the power of thier market. A few revisions into the game, creatvie labs still could notcompete with thier game blaster.. compatibility didnt exist between the cards and it was difficult to find any softare that supported these competitors cards. then came the soiundblaster. the original soundblaster 100+% compatible with eh adlib card, sold for half the price and had features that adlib would not have for another 3 years.. the first card to actually play digital audio rather than the FM synthesized music. Ad lib was set in its ways and was sure the little soundblaster could not overtake it. 3 years later, Adlib cards were few and far between. you might even be hardpressed nowadays to find someone who remembers them.. much less having had used one. LW

Standard = market share; best != standard by Deadbolt · 1999-11-05 02:03 · Score: 1

In agonizing over MS's embrace & extend tactics, there is another important factor: MS Office, Windows, IE, etc. is the standard. They are the standard for no other reason than that they are on just about every consumer desktop. The important moral of this little tale, aside from the Linux/open source community's need to focus more on the complete computer-phobic neophyte's needs, is that to beat MS, Linux, Mozilla et al. must in a way *become* MS.

Put down the gun, I'm not crazy. Hear me out.

When the IBM PC came out way back when ('81), there were a ton of other companies making PCs. Most of these PCs were better and/or cheaper than the clunker IBM was hocking. But the IBM name sold so many of those "inferior" machines that soon the "better" ones were so much silicon trash. The market share that IBM was able to grab cemented its place as the standard PC right up until the present day, and it looks like it's going to stay there for awhile.

Then came Compaq, and by reverse engineering the IBM -- i.e, getting 100% compatibility -- IBM lost its preeminence as the PC hardware maker.

I think you see where I'm going with this. Since MS is the standard OS, Office is the standard productivity whatsis, etc., we have to prove we can beat them at their own game. I admit I'm not too sure what this means, or how it could be done without subverting the open standards, but one great idea is a full-fledged, kickass web browser. Mozilla might be that browser; we have to wait and see. But open source guys can leverage their stability/adaptability advantages to out-innovate MS. (I think this can be done without breaking standards. Publishing APIs, standard protocol extensions, etc., will keep someone from 0wning the market.

--
"Honey, it's not working out; I think we should make our relationship open-source."

Leapfrog MS for once by SLOfuse · 1999-11-05 02:04 · Score: 1

I would like to see Linux leapfrog Microsoft for features in this area. Why can't someone code a really cool feature that can used with Mozilla first ("extend" apache to provide the feature). Then, write an open license so that if Microsoft wants to incorporate it, they would have to open up their entire browser (and since that's a part of the operating system, I guess they'd have to open up that as well ;-). It would need to be really cool, like internal collapsing/expanding page sections (that don't use any current techniques), or text-reading voice-synth links. Anyway the point being, what stops open-source developers from "extending" current standards and then depending on the open-source licenses to prevent MS from incorporating these features in their products? They are *not* the true innovators.

--

Criminalize spam and telemarketing!

Re:Leapfrog MS for once by ds-x · 1999-11-05 07:05 · Score: 1

What good would it do to add features that MS doesn't have? Absolutely none. So 1% of the browser market can use them? Website developers will recognize this and completely ignore any special features added for Mozilla only. Leapfrogging would only create more problems. The solution is to create a fully rfc compliant, standards based browser that will do anything that IE can do.

Just face the facts, MS has the web browser market by the balls and there is little that can be done about it.
Re:Leapfrog MS for once by Cyberfox · 1999-11-05 08:58 · Score: 1

Greetings,

I also want to make the point that we don't do this because we have self respect. If we 'win' some fight, but we become assholes in the process, how have we benefitted?

We haven't.

The answer is to out-code, and out-educate them.

Cyberfox!

Fight fire with fire. by ddt · 1999-11-05 02:04 · Score: 1

Anyone else here notice how much more they noticed Linux in the press once it got a mascot?

Branding might be the answer here. One solution, or at least ameliorization, might be to create a handsome certification stamp for web sites that run correctly on Linux Netscape.

That way, important sites can brag, "This site uses no wonky extensions that aren't in a blessed form of Java, JavaScript, or Shockwave" then plop down the sexy logo, and then link the sexy logo to a database of sites that are Linux Netscape-friendly.

I get pretty upset over glorified sites, myself. I don't think everyone making sites that don't work with Linux grok that they've goofed. Most peeps understand how big Linux is now that we've some stock IPO's associated with Linux that did so dern well.

Perhaps Tux riding the Mozilla character in a cowboy hat a la the "running linux" book cover? If this idea appeals to someone willing to run the site, lemme know, and I'll get a good game artist to put together a sexy logo.

Re:Fight fire with fire. by Greg+W. · 1999-11-05 03:17 · Score: 2

That way, important sites can brag, "This site uses no wonky extensions that aren't in a blessed form of Java, JavaScript, or Shockwave"

I prefer the works just fine with any browser approach. And by the way, Shockwave currently has no Linux plugin. That's Flash.

But your point about having an attractive button (or set of buttons) for this purpose is a good one. I'm no graphic artist, though, so I can't help there. Perhaps a new Gimp logo contest?

Now and Then by um...+Lucas · 1999-11-05 02:09 · Score: 3

Before i was very concerned with making websites that were only viewable in one browser or another. There wasn't that much diffentiation in terms of developing for one browser would making my life that much easier. With Cascading Style Sheets, that's all changed.

Let me warn you that I haven't upgraded my Netscape past 4.5, figuring they're all "dot" releases and will probably not have CSS support. If I'm wrong let me know ASAP!

But the fact remains that these days I develop sites primarily with IE in mind, because CSS is easier to develop, and produces much cleaner HTML, in my opinion. I don't know, or care, if MS has extended the CSS standard, but what i do know is that I can't seem to get equivilant functionality from Netscape.

Mozilla really needs to get it's act together, in terms of releasing a reference release, in my eyes. Just bolt on a usuable GUI and call it 1.0. Then start adding features and call that 1.5. Netscape is withering away because of the lack or percieved development. If we wait til Mozilla is perfect, it'll never come. The world changes, and just as Mozilla catches up to it, someone, somewhere, adds something new...

Re:Now and Then by Chandon+Seldon · 1999-11-05 03:50 · Score: 2

The newest Netscape Navigator release (the one with the Shop button) has limited support for CSS (Aka. Sufficient that I use CSS on all my websites and call them Netscape compatible)
There are some things that Netscape doesn't do, and when I've wanted to use those capacities of CSS, and I've found other ways to design my sites so that I didn't need to do them.
Mozilla M10 is sufficently stable that I use it to test all my websites. You shouldn't have any problem doing this eithor. It's CSS implementation is better and more accurate than that of MSIE 4.0
The Mozilla development team isn't waiting until it's perfect, the're waiting for it's develpment process to be completed. Mozilla's development plan is specific, detailed, and documented. It's based on Milestones, and it's on Milestone 10. Milestone 11 is to be labeled as a "Usable Beta". When the development process is done, 1.0 will be released.

--
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Re:Now and Then by schon · 1999-11-05 04:28 · Score: 2

Let me warn you that I haven't upgraded my Netscape past 4.5, figuring they're all "dot" releases and will probably not have CSS support. If I'm wrong let me know ASAP!

You're wrong. (I think?)

I don't know exactly what functionality you're missing, but I'm using Netscape 4.08, and CSS works pretty well. (Although you have to have Javascript enabled in order to use it - I don't know why.) I know that not all of the CSS spec is present in Netscape, but a good portion is, and it works pretty well.

I agree with the other parts you said though - Style Sheets are a godsend; Ever since I started using HTML, I've been amazed at how ugly the FONT tag is; thankfully CSS was developed, and we can do away with all that.

that's why you WILL lose by AshleyB · 1999-11-05 02:10 · Score: 1

gee, as a computer illiterate, she really had no choice at all. What was she going to do, pick the Windows machine for which you had REFUSED to help her? Your heavy handed tactic forced her into Linux and now it seems to be incapable of meeting her needs. Hmmm, being forced to use a platform the constricts you...how is that different from the reason the average zealot hates Microsoft? I guess the Open in Open Source doesn't apply to your options.

Re:that's why you WILL lose by AshleyB · 1999-11-05 03:36 · Score: 1

didn't you just make my point? you being *forced* and this guy's wife being forced under the pretense of being given an option is the same. Let's say that in fantasy world you were forced to use Windows and it did everything you wanted with no problems whatsoever (remember we are in fantasy world right now). Would there be a problem? Probably not...the problem comes when it doesn't do what you want it to do (we are back to reality now). She wants something that Linux can't give her, and now that I am sure with the knowledge she has gained from her Linux use will no doubt allow her to work with Windows I think she will still have that bad impression in her mind about Linux.
Re:that's why you WILL lose by rcromwell2 · 1999-11-05 03:39 · Score: 1

What happens if Word Perfect 8 dumps core?

Application stability matters too. There is too
much focus on the "stability of Linux" and not
enough focus on stable GUI applications IMHO.

Hear, hear! by Tau+Zero · 1999-11-05 02:10 · Score: 2

If I had moderator points right now, you'd have an "insightful".
--

--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.

Core applications by speek · 1999-11-05 02:10 · Score: 1

Everyone's got their core applications they can't live without. Swtiching to Linux requires that, on a user-by-user basis, those core applications work on Linux. For me, the core is

Java
Browser
MS-doc/xls support

At this point, I'm just waiting for Java 1.2, and then I'm gone from the world of windows.

For your everyday user, the core probably goes something like this:

Browser
MS-doc/xls
games

(note, I'm not counting things like email, ftp, newsreading, webserving, code developement, cause those things are unquestionably available on Linux).

Probably the two things on virtually everyone's list is MS-doc/xls and Browser. So, absolutely, we have to have those things.

I've been using StarOffice for 2 months now. It works well, though is buggier than MS word or excel. Mostly harmless, annoying bugs only (haven't hit any show-stopper yet, the worst is that it is constantly popping up an alert box to tell me of an unsupported format - which it then goes on to support anyway).

I had no idea browser was an issue. It surprises me, since we're always hearing of more and more sites going to Linux/Apache. Shouldn't the problem of platform dependent websites be decreasing? I respect this article, but it's anecdotal. Are there any facts and statistics available?

I wish I could help with Mozilla though......
In

--
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!

What comes first . . . by layne · 1999-11-05 02:10 · Score: 1

What's more important to ensure compatibility with the web-at-large: a coherent desktop or au courant browser?

I remember back to a story here that sparked long-winded arguments about the allocation of Red Hat's funding. The posts seemed to overlook the urgency of these problems; I can't do my banking on the web with my Debian box, my nephew's diff calculus plug-ins don't work nor will the Apple QT media for his classes etc.

In the cause of expediency, content developers look at audience statistics. One can develop a plug-in that work's great on Win32 platforms or complete a security assay for a handful of platform/browser combinations in much less time so long as the consequences exclude only a very small minority. It doesn't matter how fully implemented is Mozilla's JVM or it's DHTML support.

They need to be developed in tandem but most important is overall ease-of-use. With that comes a strong showing in the census and content managers can no longer ignore us. I can not simply find a new *nix friendly bank.

Netscape should think of the developers! by ian+stevens · 1999-11-05 02:11 · Score: 1

As someone who is working on web-based application development, I can tell you that Netscape has a long way to go before it can even compare to IE. IE is just a better browser, period. Long ago, Microsoft saw the potential for the browser-as-platform and implemented a consistent Document Object Model which adheres to many more W3C standards than any 4.x version of Netscape. CSS support in IE4 outweighs that of any Netscape 4.x as well. (Mind you, Microsoft also added a few "enhancements" here and there.) As a result, writing web-based apps is a lot less frustrating on IE than under Netscape. There is not a person on our development team who does not secretly wish we could forget about Netscape support altogether ... and these are people who bad-mouth Microsoft all the time for their shoddy products. Quite simply, Microsoft went and done good with IE.

This is not to say that Netscape's crappiness is the only issue. Most people, as we know, don't support good web design or are using web authoring tools which may use crazy IE or Windows-only extensions. They may not even know that they are doing it, nor may they care. Add that to the fact that most plugins exist only on Windows and with closed protocols.

In my opinion, though, if Netscape could make it easier to develop products and pages for its browser by supporting a more consistent DOM and a larger breadth of CSS support, they would be one step closer to pleasing the people who matter as much as the users ... the developers. I haven't really seen the environment under M10, so I can't comment on how well they are doing, but the browser looks and renders significantly better than Netscape 4.x.

Mozilla doesn't need to involve a huge overhaul either. If Netscape could start providing some decent developing tools, like a DOM browser and debugger for Netscape like the one InterDev has for IE, that would be super. Debugging code under Netscape is hell right now and involves a lot of alert() calls all over the place. Yes, they have a JavaScript debugger but it still has a long way to go.

If you reduce the number of excuses developers can give when asked to support your browser, you can make your browser easier to develop for and, in turn, much less of a pain to use.

ian.

PS. Of course, your problem could be solved if you ran IE via VMWare but that's beside the point.

--
ian

Don't Panic! by lucas_gonze · 1999-11-05 02:11 · Score: 1

Wait! It's not that simple! Open source competes against secret source on a different time scale.

Open source uses accretion, and operates on geological time. Drip, drip, drip. Slow accumulation of itches scratched... Secret source uses huge amounts of manpower and operates on mtv time. Secret source will often have the edge in the short term. So when things are changing rapidly secret source will be able to compete. It's when a market settles down that open source is unstoppable.

Word processors are a mature technology; we have parity in open source word processors. HTML is a mature technology; we have HTML parity. There is a new RealPlayer twice a day; we do not have parity.

Consumers should be able to make their own choice according to their values. Tell 'em it's ol' faithful open source VS. sexy but undependable secret source. Let there be a choice.

(Don't flame me for suggesting that open source methods can't compete in a fast moving situation! They can at exceptional moments - like the present - when heavy hype has made large numbers of people available for work - but at less visible moments progress will become glacial again!)

Corba may be the answer by Kris+Warkentin · 1999-11-05 02:13 · Score: 1

When applications can say 'Yo....Orb....gimme a jpeg viewer and a Shockwave plugin....pronto', then maybe none of this will matter. Browsers are just huge, ugly, beasts that try to do way more than they should and we need to get things more modular. I realize that plugin's are modular but it's much more profitable to write an object that everyone in the OS can use rather than just one specific application.

--

In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.

Re:Corba may be the answer by rob+colonna · 1999-11-05 03:09 · Score: 1

That's sort of what Apple had in mind with OpenDoc, and to a lesser extent, M$ with OLE, and there is a damn good reason that there is still a loyal base of Cyberdog users. It was extremely cool, just a little slow and RAM-hungry. Thngs which matter less three years later.

Is a BROWSER really the issue though? by jabber · 1999-11-05 02:13 · Score: 4

Most people with computers (ahem, Windows) use their home PC for web browsing. True enough.

To compete in this area, Linux needs a stable, solid, full-featured browser. True as well.

But, IMHO, Linux isn't even ready to take up that challenge. A solid, stable, pretty, glitzy GUI is needed first.

The OS needs to be usable to a new user - on the same level as Windows.

Linux needs to be easy to install, easy to uninstall, able to sense hardware without the user needing to open the PC to read numbers off of chips.

Linux needs to support the latest and greatest hardware, like USB (USB2), firewire, parallel port scanners, WinModems...

Linux needs to have GAMES!

Linux needs all these things to displace Microsoft as the king of the desktop!

But is that what we want? Or do we want the best OS possible. A stable and robust system, architectured to be portable and extensible, to support new hardware easily as opposed to supporting it now. It's the fisherman maxim.

Write in cool hardware support and you play now, write in extensability for new hardware and you play for a lifetime.

Unless of course what we want to do is relegate Linux to the function of WebTV boxes, in which case all it needs to do is run a browser, a mail client, and that's about it.

Let's do this right folks. Let's design it for the future. Let's not get seduced by Microsoft's rapid upgrade cycle of feature glut.

Linux isn't there yet for the desktop. We have other, more important issues to worry about. 64bit is one. IPv6 is another. Parallel multiprocessing is another still...

Fsck conformity with M$! Let's beat them, not join them. Linux has always been about technical superiority and building knowledgable users. Dumbing Linux down will not serve it at all.

If Linux bends over for the lowest common denominator, I'm going FreeBSD, and so will all the people developing for Linux.

--

-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.

Re:Is a BROWSER really the issue though? by Bryce · 1999-11-05 03:31 · Score: 2

Linux needs to have GAMES!
Definitely agreed. Linux (or rather, the open source development model in general), can have a profound and beneficial effect on the quality and innovativeness of games. Games on Linux are great and welcome, but if we're still not able to mold and shape them into new forms, we're losing out on a lot of potential.
So in addition to supporting GUI development, web development, driver development, et al., don't forget about FreeCiv, WorldForge, CrystalSpace, and the like. :-)
Re:Is a BROWSER really the issue though? by m3000 · 1999-11-05 03:51 · Score: 2

Here is some more that I believe, and that I've heard complained about, in Linux that needs to be fixed.
Re:Is a BROWSER really the issue though? by ashpool7 · 1999-11-05 03:51 · Score: 1

Let's do this right folks. Let's design it for the future. Let's not get seduced by Microsoft's rapid upgrade cycle of feature glut.
Sure, lets forget about Microsoft and their fancy new things that are being used on a majority of the PCs out there and are slowly being adpoted by new startup corporations and old established ones. Lets screw new features, yet somehow design for the future. Besides, when new markets and standards come out, who needs newfangled protocols when you can do the same thing with the old ones. Sure you can't talk to the new stuff that Microsoft made and is running on a majority of the systems out there, but you can do it.
Whatever. Linux can imatate the ease-of-use and upgradeability of Windows (ha ha joke, right? ;) and STILL keep it's reputation as a "stable and robust" system.
Why is this not happening in Linux, though? The community is not willing to make any jumps! Nobody's willing to set a new standard, take the lead, forge ahead and rally others to follow. All people can think about when a new "standard" is suggested is how they don't want to be locked into one standard for development.
This doesn't get us ANYWHERE! The only way unix in general got to where is was by setting etched-in-stone standards. Whats the default method for windowing? X windows. Whats the default method for communicating with other computers on a network? TCP/IP. These were once feared and loathed by people but they were "standard" and you could depend on them to exist. Linux is scared to make such standard because they think they'll offend, exclude, or (horror of horros) centralize. Linux is all about doing your own thing ... setting new standards is almost against religion.
This is why Linux will never be mainstream, never grab the desktop, never grace the screen of 50% of the computers out there. Linux is indecisive. If there aren't any new, well thought out, extensible, designed for the future, STANDARDS for Linux, it won't get much farther than a niche OS.
Case in point: Linux needs a standard graphical interface. There's X, but it's slow, bloated, and not really designed for the new visual technology coming out of the labs. XFree86 4.0 is coming with GL and all other sorts of whizz-bang STANDARDS developed by other COMPANIES, so we're coming along there, overhauling the system but stil maintaining the flexability. Now that the visual interface is in place, we need a GUI. Forget that! You'll never get everyone to agree on a widget toolkit, window managaer, or desktop manager for X. It's all about that do-it-whatever-way-you-want thing.
For this reason, developing for Linux is a pain. Programmers can't rely on a standard UI. They have to pick one. Only god knows if their UI will go the way of the dinosaur and everyone else goes to using Fancy Chrome Toolkit and they're stuck looking like Retro 80's and unable to support a new interface without switching toolkits. If there was a standard, then when Fancy Chrome Standard gets upgraded, their look gets upgraded and they an access the new interfaces along with the old.
I've got to go now for a job interview, but I'll be glad to discuss this thread further later on. Just remember, if we don't make the jump, we'll just be left behind to play in our own world.
Re:Is a BROWSER really the issue though? by Enzondio · 1999-11-05 04:42 · Score: 1

I agree with a few of the things on that page. Many of them have already been done. The new version of Caldera Open Linux has a fully graphical install (I didn't like it so much but the average user would love it). As for Microsoft making a Linux distro, I doubt very seriously that that will happen, why would they? And why would we want to use it?
Re:Is a BROWSER really the issue though? by Falrick · 1999-11-05 04:48 · Score: 1

A solid, stable, pretty, glitzy GUI is needed first.
As many have mentioned before, see KDE or WindowMaker or Enlightenment w/ Gnome

The OS needs to be usable to a new user - on the same level as Windows.
Again, see above comment, and Corel Linux
Linux needs to be easy to install, easy to uninstall, able to sense hardware without the user needing to open the PC to read numbers off of chips.
Yet again, see Corel Linux
Linux needs to support the latest and greatest hardware, like USB (USB2), firewire, parallel port scanners, WinModems...
Again, see.... er.. wait. Damn, we don't have these. Linux needs to have GAMES!
See Linux Game Tome and Linux Games and Loki Games
End see

--
something clever
Re:Is a BROWSER really the issue though? by Bakeneko · 1999-11-05 04:53 · Score: 1

What this really sounds like is a "turn it into Windows" plea. Which I hope gets ignored. Drive letters? He wants them back? Just because Windows has them. NO. "Make it so that the file system doesn't get corrupt when Linux crashes" OK. Journaling file system. But hey: Just because Windows doesn't repair it doesn't means its not broken. IE and MS Linux? Not likely, and not necessary. Those who are THAT stuck on Windows should stay with it and leave the rest of us alone. Permanantly mount the floppy and cdrom? How do you plan on ejecting? Personally, I'd just remove the floppy from the write cache. Now I'll admit some of the wants are fairly valid, but they mostly have to do with the "more apps" arguement. That is something that is literally improving daily.

Tim Gaastra

--

Tim Gaastra
Build a better mousetrap and the world will immediately get their fingers caught in it.
Re:Is a BROWSER really the issue though? by ottffssent · 1999-11-05 10:00 · Score: 1

The OS needs to be usable to a new user - on the same level as Windows.

Linux needs to be easy to install, easy to uninstall, able to sense hardware without the user needing to open the PC to read numbers off of chips.

Windows is easy to install and uninstall?!? While I agree that a prettier and better-explained (what're services, and why do I need them running at startup, for example) installer would be nice, the option exists to have linux pre-installed. I doubt many windows users could install and configure windows unless (miraculously) it ran flawlessly.
Linux needs to support the latest and greatest hardware, like USB (USB2), firewire, parallel port scanners, WinModems...
USB is (more or less) here. USB2 will follow. Firewire is less important than you seem to think. Parallel port scanners? Parallel ports won't even be around in a few years. USB and its ilk are more important.
Linux needs to have GAMES!
Linux has a few games, and will get more when we can find more users. It's not a matter of the linux community here, we have to rely on others for our games.

I'd comment on a few more of your points, but it's my birthday, and I'm going to celebrate now. -ottffssent

--
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
Re:Is a BROWSER really the issue though? by Abigail-II · 1999-11-05 23:04 · Score: 1

The OS needs to be usable to a new user - on the same level as Windows.
No, it doesn't. There is absolutely no reason to gain a large marketshare. Let's focus on usability for the computer minded person. Do you think Ferrari, or Rolls-Royce have the urge to change their product such that it would appeal to the masses? No - they just make quality products.
Linux is a Unix. Unices come with many benefits; but the flip side is that's it's harder to use. It's not suitable for Sally Q. User. Big fucking deal. Why should that matter?
-- Abigail
Re:Is a BROWSER really the issue though? by scrytch · 1999-11-05 23:50 · Score: 2

Let's just go over some of these, ah, "improvements".

> Totally drop the command prompt, or at least make it so you can do ANYTHING without it. Like Windows is right now.

Ludicrous. Fragmenting a unified interface into a dozen GUI interfaces spread across a dozen dialogs each taking, yes, an icky TYPED text option, is not getting rid of the command line. Doing automated complex things in NT still requires typing up some kind of perl script.

> Graphical installation screen for programs (similar to StarOffice, I myself would LOVE this too)

Joy, then we can see a burgeoning market in programs like CleanSweep that "really uninstall programs for real" thanks to idiodicy like InstallShield, which keeps its install information in the directory of the program, so if you erase or just plain move the install directory, you can't uninstall the program. Or get rid of it from your add/remove programs menu without special tools. The sheer bureacracy of installshield is something I hear no end of griping about, from novices and experts alike.

> Make it easier to use. Most of it has to do with the heavily text nature of Linux. My dad finds it easier to click some button then type in a bunch of acrane commands and options.

My experience at the helpdesk is that windows requires you to click a bunch of buttons, then type various arcane things, then click on some more buttons, type arcane things, and so on. Are you sensing a theme here? The GUI in Windows ain't so graphical.

--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Re:Is a BROWSER really the issue though? by scrytch · 1999-11-05 23:53 · Score: 2

> Permanantly mount the floppy and cdrom? How do you plan on ejecting? Personally, I'd just remove the floppy from the write cache.

He just doesn't have the correct terminology, which is hardly a crime. He wants volume management, something I take for granted on Solaris and Windows both, and have yet to see on Linux. Truth be told, most intuitive volume management I've seen was on the mac, back in 1992 or so (though it was a bit aggressive about asking for floppies when ejecting them).

--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.

Complain to the webmasters! by MS · 1999-11-05 02:13 · Score: 1

I totally agree.

I'm webmaster since the early days when XMosaic 0.9 was the only graphical browser and observed the same alarming evolution...

Getting involved with the Mozilla Project is good, but unfortunately not all of us are programmers.

Complaining to those WebMasters who are responsible for non-portable webpages is much easier: write them an e-mail asking them politely to make it's webpages "usable" to all. Tell them that otherwise we can't read them and we wont link to them. If we don't link to them, they'll loose also readers which may use MSIE on Windows... Shop will not sell, information will not be read an banners wont be seen and clicked. I call this the leverage effect.

Be assured: after they get hundrets of complaints, they'll switch!

Better still: write to the customers who own the webpage (often it's not the webmaster who wanted this Java-thingie, but it was the customer who saw somewhere this neat moving pop-up and instructed the webmaster to insert something similar in his homepage too.

To my experience, a website which is readable by all browsers and doesn't contain ActiveX, Java, Shockwave or the like has a 200% bigger audience due to various leverage-effects.

You know David Siegel? He was(!) responsible for dazzling websites, and now has turned back to the "minimalismus". Others will soon follow.

E-Commerce and it's need to reach all people we do our interests here and drive away from proprietary solutions towards robust and standardized solutions.

No, we haven't lost yet, but we will have to work hard.

:-)
ms

HTTP user agent by cwebster · 1999-11-05 02:13 · Score: 1

"Oh, and you can have a program that sets your browser identification as whatever the hell you want it to say, or even change it on the fly."

Lynx already lets you change the user agnet to whatever you want. :)

We don't want to be like Apple. by Forge · 1999-11-05 02:14 · Score: 1

Getting Office released for Linux isn't in the same league. If Office for Linux is our "main" Office suite then we are in the same position Apple has been forced into. I.e. MS can pretty much kill Apple in everything but it's graphics niche whenever it wants.

Being able to read the formats in a _seperate_ free app is what will help. Make *.doc a commodity and MS can join the XML bandwagon and play our game ( open Standards ). They haven't managed to win the web server war yet so they are wary of truly open standards.

PS : Has MS EVER ported ANYTHING to an OS which can be instaled on a machine that also runs Windows ?

--
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?

Re:We don't want to be like Apple. by toast0 · 1999-11-05 02:22 · Score: 1

Actually yes, IE 4 has/had a SCO Unix version

--
Need a Catering Connection
Re:We don't want to be like Apple. by FeeDBaCK · 1999-11-05 03:12 · Score: 1

Actually, no, it doesn't.

http://www.microsoft.com/unix/ie/default.asp

However, you can install NT on a Sparc (though I don't know who would *want* to)

--
wolf31o2 Developer, Gentoo Linux Games Team
Re:We don't want to be like Apple. by Daniel+Dvorkin · 1999-11-05 03:41 · Score: 1

As a (mostly) Netscape on Mac user, I face Web incompatibility issues fairly often, though not as often as Linux users. I'm also a Web developer (among other things) by trade, and my immediate reaction to sites that use Windows/Explorer-only plug-ins is to dismiss them as not worth my time. E-commerce sites that don't support other OS'es and browsers _will not make as much money_ as those that make their pages as compatible as possible; given the fiercely competitive nature of "e-tailing," expect them to go out of business in the long run. Problem solved.

I understand that this argument works better with techies than with non-techies, though. Education is the key, really. E.g., my wife, who is a literate user but who has no real programming skills, is often frustrated at the limitations of the Mac vs. the Windows world -- but she's also learned enough about Windows to know that she'll accept those limitations in return for the stability and ease of use the MacOS provides.

--
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Re:We don't want to be like Apple. by Starselbrg · 1999-11-05 04:30 · Score: 1

Unless some sites were paid by MS to have MS-only stuff on them. I think they did this for several WebTV-only sights. Also, isn't there a site out there that only works properly with a Pentium III? Talk about platform-specific! Not only does it only work with Windows, but only with a specific processor.

Finall, I'd like to mention that sometimes sites will have seperate pages built for different browsers and platforms. In this case, users might feel like they aren't getting the "improved Internet experience" if they aren't surfing with Windows 2000, IE 2000, and the new Pentuim 2000. It'd be a terrible world to live in.

--
Got HTML? Want LaTeX? Try html2latex
Re:We don't want to be like Apple. by Abigail-II · 1999-11-05 22:19 · Score: 1

Has MS EVER ported ANYTHING to an OS which can be instaled on a machine that also runs Windows?
Yes. I used to run MSIE under Solaris, and Solaris also runs on Intel platforms. However, I do not know whether MSIE also runs under Solaris x86.
-- Abigail

Konqueror by JabberWokky · 1999-11-05 02:17 · Score: 1

The new version of Konqueror (seen here and here) will be supporting Java, has Corba based plugins, and can emulate (send a "brand name" browser string) to view websites that think they know better than the user. I also seem to remember something about javascript being supported, although I can't find a reference, and it may or may not be coming in KDE 2.0.

Corba plug ins let you view all sorts of images, PDFs, Postscipt files, as well as browse your local filesystem.

And yes, I know that it's for KDE, but KDE will run with both E and Gnome pretty compatibly.

As for the larger premise: My personal "killer app" that is keeping me in Windows is the lack of multi-head support for ATI cards. I use two to handle multimedia in and out on two monitors. I'm hoping that XFree 4.0 will allow me to use it (at that point, I'll also have to get my USB HP 895Cse printer working).

My point is that everybody has a whole different set of priorities. Not being able to see some websites is merely annoying to me. Having to reboot two or three times a day -- that's forgivable only when I trade it off for two monitors and multimedia i/o.

--
Evan E.

--
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien

Mozilla may not win, but it's not our last hope. by Calimus · 1999-11-05 02:17 · Score: 1

As much as I have always been a supporter of Netscapes browser, I do realize that it's not the only choice we have. The people over at Opera are working on their linux version and though they ask for a little coin for their software, it is fastly becomming an alternative.

An this really pains me to say, but there is a version of IE for the *nix platform as well. Though I have never used it, or know anyone that has, I have seen that it does exist. I pray to the GOD's that I never have to see that on my desktop ( thats part of the reason I switched to linux ), it is still none the less an alternative as well.

And maybe with the fall of Netscape/Mozilla there in the aftermath may sprout a new browser that wont have the same problems. Who knows.

--
Trying to be different, just like everyone else.

This is very true.... by free+space · 1999-11-05 02:18 · Score: 1

This is all very true,currently the mozilla project has several problems: 1-FUD from the likes of CNet & ZDNet 2-Some people in The Open Source community say it's either not 'really free software' or that it's a failure. 3-The impression that Mozilla is Netscape,or that Netscape is only getting free programmers. 4-Delays. The Open Source community should participate with more code,bugs et al,currently by viewing their code changes in Bonsai* you will see 80% of the work done by Netscape programmers. -MS ---------------- * (Bonsai is Mozilla's code-changes tree-sorry couldn't come with a better def.)

Counterattack! by Spud+Zeppelin · 1999-11-05 02:19 · Score: 1

Having been involved in both (a) proprietary technology for the web and (b) commercial website development at different points in my career, it seems eminently clear to me what the counterattack strategy is:

When you come across a site that is incompatible with your browser, fire off a letter to said company's VP of marketing, pointing out that the developer they chose to build their site has made technical decisions that deliberately exclude 25-80% (depending on how severe the platform-specific nature of the site is) of their potential audience. Have your friends do likewise. Sit back and enjoy the fireworks. I haven't met a marketing VP yet who has said that they want their site anything BUT 100%-cross-platform.

Microsoft will ultimately lose the battle over proprietary web goodies simply because everybody isn't using a Microsoft client. Between AOL, Apple, *nix, Netscape-on-Win, etc. the vast majority of the world isn't.

This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.

--

MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.

Re:Counterattack! by OneThreeSeven · 1999-11-05 03:14 · Score: 1

When you come across a site that is incompatible with your browser, fire off a letter to said company's VP of marketing, pointing out that the developer they chose to build their site has made technical decisions that deliberately exclude 25-80% (depending on how severe the platform-specific nature of the site is) of their potential audience.
I haven't met a marketing VP yet who has said that they want their site anything BUT 100%-cross-platform.
It has been my experince that it is usualy the Marketing VP who has to have that cool visual fluff, not the designer. Most marketing people will agree 100% with anything you say. It is the nature of marketing to be on board and with the program, so if you say the program is 100% browser compatability, then its a priority!

--
-137

We're looking at the wrong solutions by The+Wing+Lover · 1999-11-05 02:19 · Score: 1

Rather than trying to look at how to fix web browsers to be able to look at certain sites, I would say that a better area of concentration would be in educating web designers in browser independence. We run a stock market simulation contest. People with Netscape or IE or whatever the latest browser is would consider it a cool, professional-looking site. However, it will run just as well on Netscape 2, MSIE 2, Lynx, Mosaic, Opera, etc. My point? That sites that look cool and professional-looking don't have to be MSIE-only. (Actually, Slashdot is another example). So shouldn't more of an effort be made to teach webmasters and web designers how to not make their sites rely on the latest technology? - Drew

- Drew

--

- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!

Re:We're looking at the wrong solutions by JavaNPerl · 1999-11-05 03:40 · Score: 1

I work on a Java applet which does real time streaming stock quotes and news. It all runs within a browser and is mostly cross platform. I would say that for the web in general, building a cross platform site, although sometimes annoying is not that difficult and certainly feasible. However, customers are expecting more from web apps it becomes harder to build a cross platform solution to problems. We tried to add a browser agnostic cross platform streaming video solution, couldn't do it, simply could not get it to work reliably across all of our supported platforms (Win 9X/NT, Solaris 2.X, Linux and Mac), we had to settle for a Windows only solution. Building a complicated web app in a cross browser/platform way requires serious work and most web developers are not willing to do it considering a good portion of their customers are Win/IE. I am often asked if I can we add gee-whiz cool feature X, and as long as I say it can be done under Win/IE it will most likely be added, the other browser/OS combinations are not eliminated from using our app but they don't get the same features. It often requires a lot of code to prevent our stuff from crashing on browser/OS combinations which can't do all the stuff we are trying to do and at some point I'm afraid I will be asked to forget about aything other than Win/IE.

Bring the battle to their websites. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-11-05 02:20 · Score: 1

You will never win if you have to keep playing catchup to IE.

!EVER!

Remember, that's what killed every other one of MS's competitors.

Don't even get into that fight.

If you can't browse a website with Netscape or Opera or Lynx, then make sure that SOMEBODY important at that company KNOWS that.

If they still don't change, they've lost a customer or a pair of eyes or however they want to count it.

And make sure they understand THAT.

And get your wife to get a sense of perspective.

If MS can make a site that 1% of people have to switch to IE to view, and those people switch, then MS will CONTINUE to do that.

Eventually there will be 2%

Then 4%

Then 8%

Then 16%

Then 32% of the web will only be available to IE.

Then 64%

Then the entire web.

It's easier to submit than fight.

But it's better not to switch and let those lazy bastards running the sites KNOW how wrong they are and that you aren't going to submit.

If one person bitches, big deal.

If two people bitch, big deal.

If four people bitch, big deal.

Eventually, it WILL be a big deal and they will change.

Remember the Star Wars and Disney sites?

Fight back.

Re:Bring the battle to their websites. by qwerjkl · 1999-11-05 03:03 · Score: 1

But it's better not to switch and let those lazy bastards running the sites KNOW how wrong they are and that you aren't going to submit. Which doesn't solve the problem that I wanted to view their material TODAY, not a week from now when/if they change their site.

--
abrams's advice: when eating an elephant, take one bite at a time.
Re:Bring the battle to their websites. by Carnage4Life · 1999-11-05 06:57 · Score: 1

There are also ways to get around it - most DECENT web authors will create an enhanced and a non-enhanced version of their page

That's it...That's your argument/solution?
Linux might truly dead b4 it reaches the consumer market (as a consumer OS, I don't see the departure of Linux in the Enterprise anytime soon) if that's the attitude we all take.

Bad Command Or File Name
Re:Bring the battle to their websites. by Abigail-II · 1999-11-05 22:49 · Score: 1

If MS can make a site that 1% of people have to switch to IE to view, and those people switch, then MS will CONTINUE to do that
Very true. Ditto for Netscape.
-- Abigail

The point by SheldonYoung · 1999-11-05 02:20 · Score: 1

He has a very, very valid point here. Navigator crashing is why I still reboot to Windows so my wife can browse the web. Well, crashing and the hideously ugly fonts.

Mozilla, where are you?

Honestly, I used to use Navigator almost exclusively. Now I find that it's down to about 25% at work with IE5 the other 75%. Why? As much as I don't like Microsoft, IE5 is just better.

Navigator has fallen behind the technology curve. Whizzy features are no longer enough to satistfy the public, they need stability. The dating is over, it's time for marriage.

Mozzila may save the day, but it can't come soon enough.

Wrong fight by jmorris42 · 1999-11-05 02:20 · Score: 1

Look at the problems described: Lack of plugins, Java glitches and outright refusing connects based on browser/platform ID. NONE WOULD BE FIXED IF MOZILLA SHIPPED TODAY!

If we allow the battle to be defined in these terms we have already lost. Period.

Basically what this amounts to is "we have to be able to run the Win32 copy of IE with all the plugins or we are doomed." Nope, what we need is a hall of shame for crappy sites like those described and make outcasts out of them. For now only do it to the ones who exclude for stupid reasons, sites that could easily handle all comers but just don't give a damn because it works just fine on their Win98 boxes with IE5. The important thing is to not pick on the rare site that is actually doing something interesting with one of those plugins that really can't be done any other way yet. Then so long as they make as much of the content available as possible to non-M$ clients leave em alone while working out a platform independent way of doing it.

As for a solution to the lady who is pining away for Windows, give her a partition or VMWare box with Win98 and let em experience the horror firsthand,

--
Democrat delenda est

Mozilla isn't the answer ... by Masoch · 1999-11-05 02:21 · Score: 1

... 'cause, when all is said and done, Mozilla is a part of AOL, and AOL isn't particularly concerned about Linux -- they still don't have Linux support for dial-up. And, frankly, given many Linux advocates' opinions about AOL, I can't blame them.

Netscape is fast approaching irrelevance. 4.6 is buggy, and its JVM is so bad that we were warned by one of providers not to use it for their new service. They reccomened 4.51 or "any 4.x or greater version of IE." It pains me to say it ... but, I bet in a complete thrashing of browsers on Windows platforms, IE 4 would be more stable and more compatible with HTML standards.

I have a pretty strong suspicion that Mozilla will be too little too late.

Opera, on the other hand, looks *much* more promising ... it's just not open source. But sometimes closed source isn't bad.

Just a thought ...

. . . customizable . . . by gnarphlager · 1999-11-05 02:22 · Score: 1

What we need is a full options set where we can choose to enable or disable certain tags, and have the architecture for implementing said tags standard and easily updatable.

Don't like ? Shut it off.

Want to implement a new tag ? Make up a little mod, and distribute it to your audience.

We could have a repository with custom tags, and the HTML 4.0 standards (obviously should be standard on the browser) and extensions. Just a thought anyway.

oh, and the tag could be standard for whining to yourself in a public place ;-)

--

Bad things often happen to good people,
It is up to them to see that they remain good.

It's about the monopoly that control standards! by joeler · 1999-11-05 02:22 · Score: 1

The real problem isn't writing a suitable application. The real problem is the standards that people follow. As long as Microsoft can use it's monopoly power to change or extend the commom standards whenever in benefits Microsoft and hurts their competitors, linux programmers will always be playing catch up. This is the same thing IBM faced with OS/2, as soon as IBM got things working , Microsoft would make changes to stop it.

The only thing that will save open standards is the DOJ , and only if they remain steadfast in their effort to make Microsoft stop abusing it's monopoly power. However, as, I have posted before, the real problem may end up being politics.

The DOJ only got involved after Anne Bingaman was appointed head of the anti trust division of the DOJ. About one month after her appointment she contacted the FTC and told them that if they did not intend to do something about Microsoft, to send the case over to the DOJ. However, time is running out, with elections coming up next year it is possible that a new administration will remove Anne Bingaman ( that was appointed during the Clinton/Gore administration), and the DOJ will go back to the way it was, before she was appointed.

The DOJ is fighting to keep a level playing field, where everyone can compete fairly, but Microsoft will not allow that to happen if the DOJ backs off. It is no secret that Microsoft is already giving money to some politicians to cut the budget for the DOJ , certainly they also would like to have the person removed that started all this trouble and the only way is to have a new administration take over that will replace Anne Bingaman with a more Microsoft friendly department head.

You may not be a programmer, but you may be an American voter, if you feel it is important to keep the DOJ on Microsoft's case then vote to keep the same people at the DOJ.

--
>>>please remove "nospam" from email address

Perhaps a weekend hack-fest? by Pretender · 1999-11-05 02:24 · Score: 1

Perhaps there should be some bug-stomping party, some get-together (easy if funded by AOL, slightly more difficult if not) where competent hackers all converge and fix a lot of things over a weekend or something? Something like what Loki did.

mozilla will never be done by Travoltus · 1999-11-05 02:25 · Score: 1

it takes forever to compile it when they release new versions, and I never get the kind of features I see in the screenshots. My compilations look plain and they don't render websites anything like the old netscape did, which means there are some monstrous incompatibilities hiding in that rendering engine (though I must admit it's fast). It's been ages since mozilla started and MSIE has already been through 2 large revisions already. How does Mozilla ever hope to catch up? They don't even have plugin support? Do they support java? Puh-leeze. They'll be done by 2002 maybe. MAYBE.

--
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!

Shockwave! QT4! by Dr.Whiz-Bang · 1999-11-05 02:29 · Score: 1

I am so with Dave! My wife uses our Linux system at home, and she loves it with the exception of a few missing plugins. Flash has helped bigtime, but the ones that I find she misses the most are Quicktime 4 and Shockwave (she loves http://www.candystand.com). I have suggested that she write Macromedia and Apple, and that she write the webmasters, but really she just gets annoyed with me. D'OH!

gg

--

gg
Dr.Whiz-Bang

Re:Shockwave! QT4! by waldeaux · 1999-11-05 02:55 · Score: 1

Interesting --- I tried to complain about the lack of QT4 support for Linux, but the e-mail addresses that were supplied at the QT website were not valid.
Has anyone had better luck? As near as I could see, they weren't interested in any OS that wasn't MacOS or Win9X/NT.
This to me is the chief problem, and is why I switched from BSDI to Linux: 3rd party support. I've written letters, called companies, even had companies call companies, but the ONLY response we ever get is "well, just buy a Win9X/NT box!".
This whole "save Mozilla" campaign is futile. It's already far too late. Netscape was once ahead of IE because they had the edge in that M$ took forever to get onto the Internet. The only way to regain that edge is to come up with something as important as the WWW in collaboration with everyone BUT M$, and leave them out in the cold. However, the WWW is no longer a realistic venue for this because there's little that can be done that won't just be "the minority" acting in the face of a (perceived or actual, it doesn't matter) majority using M$/IE.
From this point forward, if M$/IE doesn't have it, it won't catch on - at least until M$/IE supports it, and if only M$/IE has it, everyone else will just be told to get IE.
The war (over the WWW) was over 2-3 years ago. When IE4 beat NN4 in release date. IE5 has now beaten NN5 by *months* (really, *years*) and all the hopes about Mozilla isn't going to regain that time lost. There's nothing *in* NN5 to give it dominance over IE5 --- worse, without widespread plug-in support (even widely used plugins like QT4, etc.) it's dead before it's even released.
I've no intention of using IE myself, but no company is going to care about that. Unless that changes, it doesn't matter anymore what great things Mozilla might be able to do someday when it gets released.

Mnemonic web browser by mortonda · 1999-11-05 02:32 · Score: 1

I think the mnemonic web browser fits this description... but they need more coders to make it fly! www.mnemonic.org

Double standard regarding freedom to choose an OS? by |DaBuzz| · 1999-11-05 02:32 · Score: 2

1.I will give her a Windows computer, but will offer nothing in the way of technical support or training assistance.
2.I will give her a Linux box, and will give her complete technical support and training assistance.

For a user such as her, what is different between training for using KDE or Windows 98? Not much for her purposes of email, web browsing, and ICQ. That's the whole POINT of KDE in the first place.

Also, how hard is it to support Windows anyway ... the first 3 troubleshooting steps are reboot, reboot, and reboot. *grin*

Seriously though, I understand your argument and you have some valid concerns, but I'm afraid the way you presented them makes it seem like YOU stifled her choice of OS by refusing to support both platforms at her expense. Who in their right mind WOULD choose the system that offered zero support and training when they are brand new to the technology?

How much can we blame Microsoft for forcing consumers and OEM's hands regarding OS choice when we do the same thing for no reason other than to spite them?

Give the people what will best suit their needs ... hell, I would have given her an iMac and been done with it. (And no, I don't own a Mac.)

Re:ship it by um...+Lucas · 1999-11-05 02:33 · Score: 2

Well, it's been a year and a half, and there is no progess in terms of a shippable product. The reviews i've read all say that it's coming along quite smoothly, has a lightning fast page rendering engine, etc...

So, if it can:

bookmark sites
understand plain HTML (even without CSS)
handle GIF, JPEG, and PNG graphics
use at least 40-bit SSL connections
and
not crash very often

I'd say make a usable GUI, ship it, and start adding the parts that didn't make it into the first release. That's all. If it's completely unstable and unusable, then no, don't ship it yet. But from what I've heard, there have been some fairly solid releases.

there are ways by Matveevich · 1999-11-05 02:33 · Score: 1

Netscape has lost this war indeed, and mostly not because Microsoft is evil and just flooded market with bad product, but because Netscape folks were not any better, they were "good" because they were against Microsoft. That's not good enough. Opera has a better chance if we all would support it. And Mozilla is far behind, with the same weak interface that is not as flaxible as IE one.

Solution: INSIST on open standards. by Fish+Man · 1999-11-05 02:35 · Score: 2

IMHO, the solution is to educate web developers and webmasters.

Their is not a single web functionality that cannot be realized in both Netscape and IE and under all popular operating systems.

The problem comes in when a particular web designer chooses to implement a feature on their site that requires a proprietary Microsoft plug-in or a proprietary Microsoft extension to Java to work.

If we can educate web designers to implement everything on their sites using open standards and protocols this issue will take care of itself.

I cannot think of a single example of a Microsoft proprietary plugin or extension to Java for which there is not a functionally equivalent open solution.

Insist that developers stick to open protocols and MS's monopoly power is severely diluted.

Re:Solution: INSIST on open standards. by edremy · 1999-11-05 03:42 · Score: 1

I cannot think of a single example of a Microsoft proprietary plugin or extension to Java for which there is not a functionally equivalent open solution.
Chime. Not MS proprietary, but Mac/Windows only. http://www.mdli.com Until this gets ported to Linux you can forget about me using Linux for a workstation. (My server runs it.)
Eric

--
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"

The word you're looking for is "extensible." by for(;;); · 1999-11-05 02:35 · Score: 1

A long-standing problem with HTML is its non-turing-completeness. By not allowing extensions to HTML to be written in HTML (as they are in TeX), language extensions must be written in hacked-on plugin languages like Java and ActiveX (that are often proprietary), or must be written into the HTML interpreter itself. Is XML turing-complete? If so, that could resolve many of these problems.
Doctors amputate Turkish earthquake survivor's arm [This story contains video]

--

"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man

Re:The word you're looking for is "extensible." by kcarnold · 1999-11-05 22:40 · Score: 1

So what you're saying is that pages need to be written in some other language. I'm thinking something based on either Perl or Scheme. Both of these have more than half-decent ways of expressing objects, but I like Scheme because you can bundle things up into little subunits. Hey -- that's what the Web needs. In both Perl and Scheme, all data is the same type, taken to a (good) extreme in Scheme, where even the data objects themselves are valid as data types -- i.e. you can put a function in a list with an atom in a vector and stuff all that in variable a. Web page: List. Header == association list, title=Page Title, etc. Body == another list of objects of a certain data type. Each can contain other types. Some examples: table, paragraph, image, hyperlink, video, form, script. I look at Slashdot and see how easily it could fit into that sort of scheme (no pun intended). Now, as you were saying about Turing-completeness, relax the idea that the whole page has to be a static list. Say instead that it is a program that returns such a beastie. Then you have your Turing-completeness. The only problem with Scheme is that there are so many different additions to the standard. I personally like the additions in the DrScheme package from Rice University. You just do (require-library 'x) and x is loaded. This is what we can use for web pages. Not to mention that it has a good GUI...

I don't know if XML is Turing-complete. I've never worked in it.

Kenneth Arnold, Scheme programmer
Re:The word you're looking for is "extensible." by Abigail-II · 1999-11-05 23:35 · Score: 1

A long-standing problem with HTML is its non-turing-completeness.
Yeah, and it doesn't breathe underwater either. The ceiling in my living room isn't Turing complete either, but that isn't a problem. And neither is the fact that HTML isn't. HTML isn't a programming language, so, it wouldn't have a property that applies to programming languages.
Is XML turing-complete?
No. XML is just SGML-lite. SGML and XML are systems to describe grammars of markup languages. HTML is an SGML application. HTML *describes* the structure of a document, like all SGML and XML applications. It doesn't calculate, so talking about Turing completeness is nonsense.
There is a good reason not to allow everyone "extend" their documents with new elements. Suppose I would "extend" my document with a FLUIP element. How are you, as a browser author, going to deal with that? Mind, you have to take care of the fact that the users of your product might have special viewing requirements.
Having said that, you can extend HTML. Just write your own DTD, and use the appropriate doctype. Of course, you will have a hard time finding a browser that will actually fetch and parse DTDs, but the principle is there.
But there's this nagging problem. Now you have your new elements BRIFFLE, KRUIT, STAVOR and HINKE. You have a DTD that describes the syntax. But what do those elements mean? How should they be displayed? Stylesheets, you might argue. But can you make stylesheets for all possible platforms? Do you even know all possible platforms? What about people with special needs, like the use of large fonts, or a high contrast, who will have their own stylesheets overruling any document attached ones. How are they going to deal with those unknown elements?
Extending HTML without standards is a really bad idea.
-- Abigail

The Key to Wining at War is Picking Your Battles by OneThreeSeven · 1999-11-05 02:36 · Score: 1

And the desktop is not one you want to fight.

My wife, Trish, makes the perfect example of the typical desktop user.

I will give her a Windows computer, but will offer nothing in the way of technical support or training assistance.

I will give her a Linux box, and will give her complete technical support and training assistance.

Your wife does not represent the typical PC user. The typical PC user has no support options available to them at all. They call Dell, or Compaq, or head off to Sears, and buy what they see. They figure out how to adjust their wall paper, they figure out how to get on-line, because there is a "Get On The Internet" icon right there on the desktop they can select.

Rarely, do they have experienced professional technical assistance sitting on the couch watching football.

The real battle will not be fought on consumer desktops. It will be fought in corporate datacenters, where concerns are not related to a servers ability to display Macromedia fluff, but on ROI, price/performance, scalability, high availability, development tools, and ease of integration. This is where development resources need to be focused, as it is the battle where Linux can win.

Don't worry about the desktop. Microsoft owns it. Big deal. Worry about the computers that serve all that content. I wouldn't put Linux in front of a general user any more than I'd put Solaris, HP-UX, or Irix in front of them.

The web was initially created as a completely open environment where multimedia can be viewed, regardless of your platform.

This is incorrect. The web was created as a place where resources could be easily indexed and referenced. Multimedia had nothing to do with it.

--

-137

Its no skeleton key... by gad_zuki! · 1999-11-05 02:36 · Score: 4

Maybe we should stop pretending Open Source can be everything to everyone. If anything this article should encourage a slew of complaints against webmasters who make make incompatible pages and make you wonder to what ever happened to standards.

So who wants to vote for this month's most proprietary web pages? We'll make a nice webpage and a link to the lucky webmasters.

Scary thought: Inbox 10,000 emails with the subject, "Can't access your page."

Scarier: 10,000 emails a month until you fix it.

Re:Its no skeleton key... by stg · 1999-11-05 20:34 · Score: 1

The problem is that most webmasters seems to consider having the most graphical, animated, in-your-face site is much more important than any actual information content.

I use Windows as my main machine, and have been using Opera lately - even on Windows, if you're not using Netscape or Explorer (and it can't be an old version!), many sites simply won't work. Some will even have a first page that just says you can't access without Netscape/IE.

I certainly would love a way to get these webmasters to know that there is a lot of people that don't like this only-the-latest-browsers-in-Windows attitude.
Re:Its no skeleton key... by Weerdo · 1999-11-07 19:40 · Score: 1

>Scary thought: Inbox 10,000 emails with the subject, "Can't access your page."

>Scarier: 10,000 emails a month until you fix it.

Scariest: 10,000 users per month branded as zealots. Bad publicity, then NOBODY wants to be associated with Netscape (like in AOL). Game lost.

(Think before acting)
Re:Its no skeleton key... by Karellen · 1999-11-08 23:40 · Score: 1

Now _this_ is a good idea.

Apply the /. effect to the most offending (non-standard) web site of the week, followed by a barrage of (very polite, but somewhat disgruntled) emails mentioning 'how unfortunate it is that I can't access the site properly'.

Check back a month later to see if things have improved.

Rinse, repeat.

--
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?

Browsers alone do not a web make! by g.liche · 1999-11-05 02:36 · Score: 1

Unless you can educate webmasters about the fact that not everyone accesses the web using IE, this problem *will not* go away! M$ always is going to have the resources to throw at "value added feature" development, at the expense of standards, good taste, or anything else.
I suggested in a previous post (with heavy sarcasm that evidently wasn't picked up) that we play their game. Obviously, this is what we must not do- what we do need, however, are not only equivelent tools for the internet, but we need to develop original ones as well.

As long as we're playing catch up, we can't expect the masses to want to change OSs
- Open Source has wonderful potiential, and we have to play to our strengths: creativity, innovation, passion, and the moral high ground! :-)

--
-------------------- Standard disclaimer.

Re:Lets overcome inertia and apathy... by Travoltus · 1999-11-05 02:36 · Score: 1

yeah but I can't code so what's the use...hehe

--
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!

Web browser by Andy · 1999-11-05 02:38 · Score: 1

As originally conceived, the browser (Mosaic) was a nice efficient way to browse nicely formated text. Today browser is an absolute garbage can of features. Consider:

HTML with M$ and Netscape extensions
CSS/Javascript style sheets
Sun and M$ Java
OS dependent pluggins

The W3 Consortium has completely lost control of defining what a browser is to Microsoft. Netscape is all but dead. I used to think that RMS's idea of developing a free full featured browser (E-scape) was a waste of time. I was wrong. The free software community needs to develop a good browser. It is more important than the desktop initiatives.

A somewhat lengthy response by satanel · 1999-11-05 02:42 · Score: 1

I humbly beg to differ on a crucial supposition.

With all due respect, it is a passionate article, but I believe the author is focusing his attention on an effect as a cause, though the call for a good browser for LINUX is nonetheless an excellent suggestion.

I would argue that the situation with browser incompatibly is an effect of a prior cause. That prior cause, I would argue is that sites are being constructed which use proprietary, platform-specific "plug-ins" or proprietary extensions to Internet standards. If those did not exist, his browser dilemma would be non-existent.

If that is indeed the root cause of this situation, then I would ask, why would developers use software or features that effectively limit the viewing audience? Clearly, it is in their best interest to make their sites accessible to all. This, of course, excepts those companies and their associated entities who have a vested commercial interest in propagating their proprietary software and features such as Netscape, Sun, Microsoft, to name a few. It is akin to television and the broadcast signal: ABC would be foolish to make it impossible for owners of Sony televisions to view their programs, though Sony would have an interest in making it impossible for anyone without a Sony to view their programs. Why would the ABC site use features that "lock out" some users for all intents and purposes? There must be a compelling reason to use Netscape specific-tags knowing that it will have an adverse effect on some segment of the viewing population.

What is driving the decisions of these site creators is a need for functionality that is only available in proprietary tools. No one willingly (with the exceptions noted above) makes a decision to lock out any segment of the viewing public unless they have to. It comes down to a cost-benefit analysis of how much of a return they will get from the 90% of the public that can view their site versus how much of a loss they will take from the 10% of the public that cannot view their site. If it is faster to get functionality to a majority or plurality with acceptable returns, then site creators go in that direction. Certainly, it would be better to get to 100% of the public, but do you wait until the standard is released or do you calculate your acceptable loss ratio and move forward with the proprietary solution?

In effect, what is creating this situation is that proprietary software is faster to deploy and has features that the standards lack. Standards are established through a long, torturous process of negotiation between vendors and thus inherently slower to be established. You have more features available using Netscape specific tags than using "pure" W3C HTML and developers flock to the features. Netscape creates its features by fiat; W3C through negotiation. It is the same difference between unilateral action and multi-lateral action: the former is always more decisive because there is a unity of purpose which the latter lacks. Churchill noted that "a camel is a horse designed by committee" and there is truth in that. An individual (person, company, country) can always act faster than a group (of people, of companies, of countries).

Building a better browser for LINUX is not, per se, going to allow the author's wife to remove her Windows machine. It will help generate a stronger LINUX market and encourage sites to use LINUX specific proprietary software rather than or in addition to Windows specific and Mac specific software. But, someone will always be left out in the cold because the proprietary software evolves faster than standards-based software, though it may be AS/400 users, Amiga Users, or WebTV users. In the end, the problem the author identifies is not the lack of a LINUX browser, but the fundamental difference between proprietary software and standards-based software evolution.

This is the SAME issue as disabled accessibility! by Kynn · 1999-11-05 02:43 · Score: 1

The other side of the coin from yesterday's discussion about web access for the blind has revealed itself. Linux proponents must support an interoperable, platform-independent web that can be used by any valid user agent!

That does indeed include users with disabilities, too.

You can help contribute to this cause by avoiding specific-platform HTML code and instead coding to the HTML 4.0 spec. Create websites that can be used by everyone, not just one browser on one platform.

Accessibility == platform independence == interoperability. You didn't care about the blind being shut out yesterday, but you do care about the linux user being excluded today? Think it over carefully, my friends, and promote a web that ANYONE can use.

--Kynn

--
Kynn's page: http://kynn.com/

redhat/opera buyout? by browser_war_pow · 1999-11-05 02:43 · Score: 1

How about having redhat buyout opera and begin distributing opera under either the qpl or the bsd license. that would certainly solve our problems and it would **really** hurt Netscape and Microsoft!

Re:redhat/opera buyout? by The_Messenger · 1999-11-05 03:46 · Score: 1

Good point. I've only used Opera in Win98, but on that platform it beats IE5 (and Netscape 4, duh) in terms of speed, easily. Also, I *have yet* to have Opera crash. Very good deal.

...Of course, you're screwed if you visit a site with plugins... but is that really that big of a problem? My daily broswing to read news, read /., shop for computer parts, and basically screw around was never hampered when I was reviewing Opera.

For anyone who has not tried this product, go to opera.com and download it NOW! It's extremely fast, very configurable, and the install file fit on a floppy disk, at least with the version I DLed. (compared to my Netscape DL of 20MB) If you're reading this, Michael, thanks again for making me download it. ;)

--
--
I like to watch.

It's been done by Desert+Raven · 1999-11-05 02:43 · Score: 1

Sun built a 100% Java browser, called HotJava.

Unfortunately, it sucked rocks.

This is not exaggeration, either. HotJava was actually worse than IE 1.0. And, instead of fixing it, Sun abandoned it, and told the world, "see, it is possible to build a browser in Java, now try it yourself!" And the rest of the world said "yep, it is possible to build a browser in Java, but why would I build something that sucks?"

In the end, all we got was a really bad taste in our mouths, and a dislike for desktop Java applications.

Maybe someone will try again. But I'm not holding my breath.

Re:It's been done by rcromwell2 · 1999-11-05 03:29 · Score: 1

Someone already did do it, in fact, several
people have.

The Beduin browser (for PersonalJava), and
the ICE Browser (icesoft) are both ALOT better
than HotJava.

The ICE browser even does CSS2.0, MathML,
JavaScript, SMIL, and lots of other things.

Coding makes a huge difference. Remember,
Mosaic sucked and was slow, and so was Netscape.

IE4/Mozilla are much better than their former
C++ counterparts (IE1-3, Netscape1-4) in their
rendering engine speed, and that's precisely
because of the algorithms used.

Just look at jEdit (www.gjt.org), an emacs clone
written in Java. It's very speedy and usable
on my Celeron 300Mhz 128mb system with JDK1.2.2.

(and it probably runs much better under IBM JDK1.1.8)
Re:It's been done by greenrd · 1999-11-06 00:54 · Score: 1

Just look at jEdit (www.gjt.org), an emacs clone written in Java.
I've used both jEdit and emacs, and calling jEdit an emacs clone is like calling Notepad a Wordperfect clone. OK, it could have moved on a bit since I used it, but I doubt it's reached the level of complexity where it's anywhere near comparable to emacs.

--
Female Prison Rape in NY

Another problem by Joe_NoOne · 1999-11-05 02:44 · Score: 1

Another web related problem I've been dealing with on the toasters discussion group (Toasters=NetApp type hardware) is that the web designers want all the bells and whistles, and people noticed that because of said bells and whistles they can't get to the support website using LYNX because it requires cookies and javascript.

Uh, if your system is down and you're sitting at a VT terminal, all you can use is lynx. No pretty GUI matters -- gimme the damn files and info.

But in deference to this article -- the next logical extension to the problem is the web page creators. They just grab all the neato tools and use them. They don't care if they're proprietary or not, just if it looks cool. And they just use microsoft o/s because that's the default. I mean who here has seen Intel's commercial for their free web tools? You can bet that doesn't work on an Alpha or on linux...

It's an issue of symptom vs. cause. The cause is ignorance, the symptom is proprietary plugins.

Something that could work... by Rob+Y. · 1999-11-05 02:44 · Score: 1

This may sound a little drastic, but it's the only way I can think of to enforce open standards for web sites.

There's lots of talk in government these days about incentives to help the web live up to its (over-hyped) promise as the mall of the future. Well, why not condition some of those incentives (like the sales tax moratorium, etc.) on use of open protocols on all web pages associated with a site. New client-side standards can be used if and only if they are open source (or maybe just fully documented).

It's not really as drastic as it sounds. If the web's going to replace TV, telephones, etc. like they all claim, then why not have the government enforce the standards that are used? Imagine the chaos if TV networks had been allowed to tweak the standards.

A lot of people out there have been convinced (mostly by the Republicans since Reagan) that any government involvement in any kind of marketplace is a recipe for disaster. I don't think that's really the case. Anyway, my proposal doesn't really interfere with the creativity of the marketplace. All it insists on is that any new internet standard that is to be rewarded by government tax incentives must be available on all client platforms.

Okay. Flame away, all you government bashers.

--
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...

You're smoking too much pot by earache · 1999-11-05 02:45 · Score: 1

> other major plugins WILL be ported to > Linux - at least if their vendors/proponents > want them to survive! According to StatMarket, 94% of the web viewing public uses windows. Other/Linux only nears the 3% mark. What gain do they have porting it to linux? None, financially. Losing 6% of the web viewing public on a site due to their lack of web browsing technology isn't such a bad thing. - the sinister mister earache.

it'll take more than elbow grease by hugg · 1999-11-05 02:48 · Score: 1

One of the less-tractible problems with Linux as a web platform is not the quality of its browsers -- it is the hordes of VC-funded companies trying desparately to push their IPO out the door before the carcass of the Internet is picked clean. They are constantly creating technologies that support only the platforms with market share (Microsoft) and don't give two squats about the runners-up.

Witness all the new sites that do fun stuff like give you a Windows-mountable networked drive, synchronize your bookmarks with a little app in the toolbar, the prolitferating Windows media forms, the fun 3D stuff... it's no longer just about the browser; it's about the platform, and it's just hard for a lot of part-time coders to keep up with glory-crazed propietary-technology-creating corporations.

IMHO we had a chance with Java, and it failed us, for purely technical reasons. Too slow, too flaky, too ugly, too late. Folks went back to MFC and the Win32 API, and accepted the 5% loss of market-share by not supporting "fringe" platforms.

The solution? Get Linux on more desktops, get it looking more like a Mac (another runner-up), and hope it works out before Microsoft starts incorporating technologies like wallets in their OS. Oops...

The next stage by CosmicSheep · 1999-11-05 02:49 · Score: 1

This is a clear indication of where we go next. We have a installed server base, and the applications are where we need to concentrate. I think that a browser that is extensible with the use of source level plugins makes it future-proof and easily customisable. Why stop here? An office suite that has the ability to be tailored to a user's requirements. MS Office is not my choice of software for scientists (being what I am) and having a decent framework for adding new graph types, analysis tools and other really useful features is what we need. Forget expanding useless features - paperclips - Wizards - I need something can can configured to do the job for me. Not for anyone else. If I want MP3 support in a browser, then add a module and run make. It's there. Software is different things to different people, but having something can be made to suit the person is going to win. Who cares if MS bring out 'standard' after 'standard'? We can support them all - and remove them again once they fail to corner the market. Proprietary software is going to hate this, because they are not going to sell a new version every year or so - but for Free Software/Open Source it makes sense. The framework is the most important part. Get that right, and you can hang virtually anything off it. All we need are a few good hackers and the desktop market is then ours too...

War? by Jonas+�berg · 1999-11-05 02:49 · Score: 3

I am somewhat confused. What war are people talking about here? Browser war? Sure, we could lose that. No big deal really. We've already "won" the war against proprietary software -- we've built a wholly free operating system. I don't think we were ever at war though, not that I could see anyway.

I think people are confused as to what free software is about. Free software is not about bringing down Microsoft, or any other company creating proprietary software, it's not about getting GNU/Linux on all computers world-wide either. The goal was and still is to create a wholly free operating system. I get the feeling that people in our community feel threatened by proprietary software and I don't understand that reasoning. I use exclusively free software on my systems (except for ssh, but that will hopefully change soon); I have no need for proprietary software, so why should I feel threatened by it?

Re:War? by coaxial · 1999-11-05 06:22 · Score: 2

What war are people talking about here?

The war on proprietary software, what else?

[The] [b]rowser war? Sure, we could lose that. No big deal really.

Uhh no. To ~99% of the people, the browser is the main way to access the Internet. It's your HTML viewer, it's your FTP client, it's your USENET/mail reader. Hell it's even enables people to chat (with appropriate plugins). If you give up the browser, you're giving up one of the most strategic pieces of software on the planet. Microsoft realized this (eventually) and that's why they licensed Spyglass Mosaic to jumpstart IE.

We've already "won" the war against proprietary software -- we've built a wholly free operating system.

Builing a Free operating system is just showing up for the fight. That's not victory at all. Victory is total anilation of the enemy. Who's the enemy? Currently Redmond, but more generally anything that's proprietary. (Of course we can take the war further, turning on Whoever-is-Not-Us. That's competition, it's a war. Kill or be killed.) What's the penalty for losing? Complete marginalization.

I get the feeling that people in our community feel threatened by proprietary software and I don't understand that reasoning. I use exclusively free software on my systems (except for ssh, but that will hopefully change soon); I have no need for proprietary software, so why should I feel threatened by it?

The fear is marginlization, and marginalization == death in this industry. If we allow ourselves to be marginalized we'll be no different than the Amigans. ("I have an Amiga, I have no need for the PC. Why should I fear it?" Uhh you can't do anything modern with it today?) That is the price of failure.

You use Free Software. That's great. So do I, but would you still use if advancements passed it by? Why doesn't anyone use NCSA Mosaic anymore? It was Free. It was the best thing out there for years. Now if you try and use that you're out in the cold.

To make Free Software worthwhile, it needs to be at least comprable to it's proprietary counterparts. Sure we get lots of times we get close (GNOME, KDE, Gimp, Gnumeric, ...) but they are not professional grade tools. (Gimp lacks the ability to draw cricles, lines, and rectangles. (Or at least every installation of Gimp I've seen.)) Only then can we we say we're in the competitive. Proof of Concept != Viable Alternative.

Most people don't give a damn about ideals. They want what works. When The Movement has the best product in the market, and so many people uses it,that The Movement gets to set the agenda then we would have won. That is victory.

Plug-ins... by PatDunn · 1999-11-05 02:50 · Score: 1

I think we're forgetting something here. Plug-ins will start to come out in droves when the tools to develop them are mature. Not many windows coders use c/c++ without using a RAD environemnt. When Inprise releases delphi/c++ builder RAD environments for Linux the apps will start flowing including plug-ins. All in my opinion. Pat

--
Web Developer

The Browser's not the problem. by Giordana · 1999-11-05 02:50 · Score: 1

IMHO, Linux isn't even ready to take up that challenge. A solid, stable, pretty, glitzy GUI is needed first.

KDE is pretty, stable, solid, glitzy GUI. Gnome is pretty and glitzy, approaching solid and stable.

The OS needs to be usable to a new user - on the same level as Windows.

Mandrake's distro with KDE is extremely easy for a Windows user to get used to, especially if you set up X to start automatically. I installed it on my machine last month after four years of using Windows.

Does anyone remember the iMac ads where the guy says "A computer person? That would be like changing my sex!" ? People use iMacs (and Windows) because they're easy to set up and use. The "Geek Factor" isn't there. If Linux is to appeal to non-geeks, it has to "dumb down" a bit.

As far as the browsers, it would be nice if there were a shockwave player for Linux. But the problem is people writing pages for specific browsers (like IE), not for the web in general. the same thing happens if you use Netscape for Windows.

The article almost hit the nail on the head. We need to get the word out about Linux, but we also need to make it easier for the average user to use

--

Put my clarinet beneath your bed 'till I get back in town.

Re:The Browser's not the problem. by Eric+the+.5b · 1999-11-05 03:07 · Score: 1

And we shall call it...iX.
Re:The Browser's not the problem. by scrytch · 1999-11-05 23:56 · Score: 2

> As far as the browsers, it would be nice if there were a shockwave player for Linux.

I'm using it now. What would be nice would be Macromedia Director for Linux.

--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.

Trish is getting shafted by pohl · 1999-11-05 02:51 · Score: 1

IMO, the author isn't holding up his end of the deal when he promised support for Linux. Turn off Java? How about fix the problem and make Java work? The plugins may be more of a problem, but it sounds like he didn't even try to make things work.

I appreciate where the author is going here, but the whole war metaphor is getting old. Think in constructive terms instead.

--

The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...

Re:Poor Trish. Dave, you ass. -- I beg to differ! by Fish+Man · 1999-11-05 02:52 · Score: 2

Isn't that interesting (and insulting).

My wife, Kathleen, like Trish, probably represents the typical computer user.

For years she has booted our dual boot desktop machine into Windows and I have booted into Linux.

She is so sick and tired of relentless, constant "blue screens o' death", and "this program has performed an illegal operation" messages that she has asked me for the following favor: Teach her Linux!

You see, she sees me hum along in linux crash free on the same damn hardware!

We plan to buy a more powerful box in the next month or so, anyway. So, what I'm going to do is set her up an account with the newest, slickest, most windows looking configuration of Gnome I can set up, give her a few lessons, install Applixware or Star Office (or both) as her MS Office replacement and see how it goes.

We both predict she'll like the change!

Absolutely Rediculous! by Maul · 1999-11-05 02:54 · Score: 1

I browse the web in Linux with Netscape. I don't have any trouble viewing 99% of the sites that I want to see.

If a webmaster can't dedicate enough time to making sure that their homepage works in every browser at a satisfactory level, we should not be giving that webmaster's page the time of day.

Any plugin that isn't ported to Linux (or another OS that people use for that matter) is in violation of what the web is supposed to be.

Now, if Mozilla materialized into a good usable browser, that'd be great. However, it saddens me that people are bring the OS war to this stupid level of "I can't view MTV's web page because they require the MegaKewlKrad2000 plugin!"

--

"You spoony bard!" -Tellah

drop netscape code base by kmarx · 1999-11-05 02:56 · Score: 1

If the Mozilla writers were smart they would drop the Netscape code base. It's obviously a piece of crap I mean when doesn't Netscape crash on any platforms? Have you ever gone a day without Netscape crashing after using it for more than 2 hours? I haven't. I switched to IE and guess what it's stable and fast. Netscape lost the browser war for a good reason, their product sucks. Windows 98 helped granted but IE is simply better. Linux's best hope for a good browser is either an Opera or IE port. You mine as well stop wasting your time with Mozilla unless your doing a rewrite.

Re:drop netscape code base by Mike+A. · 1999-11-05 03:03 · Score: 1

That's exactly what the Mozilla people have done. At the very least, the rendering engine is almost totally from scratch. That, in fact, is why Mozilla is taking so long.

--

--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?

Being just as good is not good enough! by Frank+Sullivan · 1999-11-05 02:56 · Score: 2

Simply matching the functionality of Windows isn't enough. Even matching the functionality for Free (both beer and speech) isn't enough. If we want World Domination, we have to be BETTER than Windows. WAY better than Windows.

In general, i think X with modern window managers and KDE or Gnome is already superior to Windows as a desktop. And of course, Linux/*BSD totally kicks Windows' ass as an underlying OS.

But Linux falls short of (or barely on par with) Windows on two fronts - web browsers, and office productivity applications. We have a mediocre, obsolescent, buggy version of Netscape (how many other apps do you kill -9 on a regular basis?), and Office imitations like StarOffice and Applix. We *can* do better than that; we *must* do better.

Work on the browser is already in place with Mozilla. They are clearly on the right track, development-wise. If only other Open Source gui apps had such a well-planned design! (are you listening, Gnome?) Don't rush them. Don't insist on some bug-ridden premature 1.0 release to satisfy some artificial market-hype deadline. They're doing it right, and doing it right takes time and patience.

I hope to see the same fundamental-rethinking wisdom applied to office productivity apps too. The tools are becoming available, in the form of XML and other standard technologies (and maybe Mozilla for a display engine!). I have ideas, but that's another story.

When the Open Source community is turning out *better* browsers and productivity tools than MS can make with all their zillions of dollars, we will win. But the battle shouldn't be with MS... it should be with ourselves, constantly challenging the community to do better.

This "war" is pointless. If your goal is simply to beat Microsoft, you need loftier goals. :}
---
Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.

--
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.

Re:Netscape on linux just plain sucks. by richieb · 1999-11-05 02:57 · Score: 1

[..in Netscape composer...] Even on the latest 4.61, if you do something as elementry as insert a link, it'll bus error, for god's sake! This is just entirely too lame. And it doesn't even have Mozilla's excuses.

Oh come on. Use Xemacs for god's sake!

...richie

--
...richie - It is a good day to code.

Re:Ouch! by g.liche · 1999-11-05 02:57 · Score: 1

I agree, we're the good guys- the previous post was intended to be sarcastic, but I messed up the pseudo-tags (not to mention mis-spelling throw as through)!
I guess that is what I get for blowing my first post... ;)

--
-------------------- Standard disclaimer.

Re:Netscape on linux just plain sucks. by Alex+Belits · 1999-11-05 03:00 · Score: 1

Even on the latest 4.61, if you do something as elementry as insert a link, it'll bus error, for god's sake! This is just entirely too lame. And it doesn't even have Mozilla's excuses.

Ever tried to install a port that matches your libc? Not to mention that 4.61 was "the latest" 4 months ago.

--
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.

Something I thought about by j-ral · 1999-11-05 03:04 · Score: 1

Apache supposedly is the httpd package that runs most of the www servers on the internet. At least thats what I heard. If we don't want all this extra junk, then we don't support it. Apache is still a main part of the OSS revolution isn't it? Anyway, I guess thats what I don't understand, we still have alot of control. We can fight it, and Linux has overcome greater problems. We will stand tall in the end.

--
"Part of the reason Alien and Jaws work is that when you see Jaws at the end, you think, 'Holy shit, that's a big fuckin

Re:This is cheezy, dorky alarmism. by Foogle · 1999-11-05 03:08 · Score: 2

More to the point: There is no war!

It's not a competition. There is no competition. It's about the user's choice. If the user wants to use MS because it supports more websites, then they will. If they want to use Linux because it doesn't crash and it's free, they'll do that too.

It's about choice for companies too. If they want to develop plug-ins for Linux, they will. If they see a big enough demand for it, they definitely will. Right now that demand just isn't there. Why? Because not enough people have chosen Linux.

Don't get your pants in a bunch because you think this is a battle. It's not. MS doesn't have to lose for Linux to win. Linux is just an operating system. It's people who win -- and they do so by finding a system that works for them. It would be wonderful if Linux was that system, but for most it isn't. Because of browser incompatibilities and other topics that have been discussed into the ground.

And if those problems are never overcome? Then Linux doesn't take the average user's desktop. Oh well. I don't care if it does. I like having Linux on my desktop. I don't have to see it on every desktop, just because I don't like MS. I absolutley refuse to make it personal.

-----------

"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

War? by ponyisi · 1999-11-05 03:08 · Score: 1

Will someone please tell me at what point this became a "war" that we had to "win?" When I switched to Linux (and it wasn't all that long ago, back in the early 2.0s) Linux was an alternative, one that didn't crash twice a day, didn't self-destruct, and had a lot of free development tools (important for a fairly poor student). Recently, though, one might think that Microsoft and company were threatening our lives or something, based on the vitriol.

Currently, Windows is a better choice for my mother, say, because she would rather deal with an unreliable OS than have to remember 'su root; shutdown -h now'. That's her right to choose, and it's not a flaw in Linux that she considers it next to incomprehensible. There's no such thing as a one size fits all operating system, any more than there's a one size fits all editor (I say vi, you say emacs...).

Viewing Windows NT, say, as an 'enemy' is ludicrous. Unlike OS/2 (RIP, sweet operating system), Linux isn't all that dependent on some company's goodwill for improvements. So what if XYZ company chooses Microsoft? Their gain or loss. If you're going to stick with Netscape as the major graphical browser, you can't blame them for the product they put out. (So yes, I do support Mozilla over Opera; in my opinion, free software is always a more pragmatic choice in the long run.)

So enjoy the reason you chose Linux in the first place -- it works.

If it doesn't work in some way you want it to, make it, if you can (if you run into a proprietary software roadblock, that's a different issue. Use a free alternative.) If other people haven't used it because of that problem, they will switch over too, if they have any sense.

Bemoaning the fact that some websites don't work in Netscape on Linux won't fix anything; write to the webmaster, or simply take your business elsewhere.

And please, please don't make it sound like we've declared hostilities on Redmond; that search-and-destroy mindset is exactly what produced Microsoft in the first place.

browser problem? by wimbakker · 1999-11-05 03:10 · Score: 1

sites I can't view with netscape aren't worth the trouble.

--
"hello, you are reading my comments"

Java, Un*x, and Sun/Netscape by The_Messenger · 1999-11-05 03:10 · Score: 1

Sun and Netscape are partners. Remember the holy Alliance, destined to save us from the clutches of the Evil Empire? I will bring up two points:

Netscape and Java: Sun created Java. So it disgusts me to hear of problems like your wife's with Netscape and Java. (Perhaps that specific page was just coded badly??)

Netscape and Un*x: Sun makes Solaris, a groovy Un*x flavor. So, it would make sense to me that Netscape should perform at least as well on Un*x as on Windows, if not better. However, Netscape for Linux is just sad. I still use Netscape almost exclusively (nevermind the fact that IE5 is twice as fast). But I use it under Windows 98.

I will stand by Sun, but Netscape needs to get its act together. I do not agree that Mozilla's success will be Linux's savior, but Mozilla's failure will be Netscape's downfall.

--

--
I like to watch.

Stop the hate... by sansbury · 1999-11-05 03:14 · Score: 1

I hate articles like this one... That seem to think that one aspect of Linux can cause us to lose the "war" with Windows

Well, the Web is the killer app of the late '90s. It's pretty much impossible to imagine selling a desktop machine w/o a decent browser.

Windows is all smoke and mirrors (marketing).

Windows might be deeply flawed but it has consistently delivered the best mixture of price, performance, and support for the 90% of machines out there that use some flavor of it. And yeah, it has a Hell of a good marketing department behind it too, as every successful product must.

Linux is an product that is actually well made and capable of delivering on its promises.

As far as I'm concerned, Linux is still more of a movement than a product. If all that energy can be properly channeled, then we may end up with something.

-cwk.

MS Office isn't a monopoly either by Greyfox · 1999-11-05 03:15 · Score: 2

Most of the proprietary documents I get are in Lotus WordPro format. Gotta wonder why -- if there's a software company on the planet with lower quality that MS, it's Lotus.

Our department briefly wrestled with the problem of different document types and finally came down from on high and said that PDF files should be used to transmit documents. That's fine for me, I can use pdflatex in Linux and gs or xpdf to view 'em (Acroread doesn't work on glibc systems yet.)

--

I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

Re:MS Office isn't a monopoly either by m0nkyman · 1999-11-05 07:47 · Score: 1

(Acroread doesn't work on glibc systems yet.)
That's odd it seems to work on mine....

oops, just checked, that would be because I have the compatiblilty libraries for libc5. It works anyways, and on Mandrake 6.0

--
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.

I hate malinformed posts like this one. by ~k.lee · 1999-11-05 03:16 · Score: 1

The fact is that Netscape STILL dominates the Browser war for two reasons:
1) Companies use netscape on all their UNIX boxes.
2) Companies use netscape on all their Win95 boxes. IE wasn't free when the majority of companies purchased their licenses, and Netscape continues to dominate the market share in the commercial sector, which is roughly twice the size of the personal or private sector.

What a wonderful fact. Unfortunately it's incorrect. If you look at the server stats all across the web, you will see that IE is definitely winning the battle. Anyway, Communicator 4 and IE 4 were both released under equally free terms (and equally large downloads) so your argument about the cost of running either is vacuous.

Furthermore many pro-Linux people I know have been grumbling about the lack of the latest RealPlayer support and other niceties that people in the Windows world take for granted. Availability of certain plugins count almost as much these days as the browser.

You see, one of the most important differences between Windows and Linux is that Windows is all smoke and mirrors (marketing) whereas Linux is an product that is actually well made and capable of delivering on its promises. The public will grow tired of the illusion sooner or later, its all a matter of time.

This sort of Manifest-Destiny-style triumphalism is doing untold damage to the Linux community.

First of all, in case you haven't noticed, the biggest growth sector in computing is in online applications, not the desktop OS. The killer apps of the Internet revolution are websites. Nobody is going to care that Linux is robust if you can't access the next eBay through it. And there's nothing the Linux community can do to duplicate those websites because they are unique proprietary services that depend upon an irreproducible community of participants.

Second, assuming blithely that Windows is all smoke and mirrors, and will remain so forever, is simply a mistake. If you really believe that the tens of thousands of programmers at Microsoft with IQ in the 130's and up are incapable of producing a decent product, you need to re-examine your assumptions.

NT workstation, properly tuned, is very stable. Not as stable as Linux, but certainly not the crash-prone piece of snail-speed junk that some Linux advocates claim it is. Also, if you've seen the snapshots of Windows 2000's web-like desktop, you should be very afraid: I think Microsoft is closer to producing a consumer appliance "Internet OS" than anyone else out there.

The last thing the Linux community needs right now is complacency. Bill Gates got to where he is today by being utterly paranoid at every step that someone's going to crush him; we would do well to emulate him in this respect. With the DOJ trial winding down, Microsoft will soon be running without hobbles again. Linux coders need to rise to the challenge, and quickly. Dave was absolutely on target about the crucial importance of Mozilla. Mozilla may very well be the most important Linux software project ever.

~k.lee

--
(remove nospam for email)

What War? by DQuinn · 1999-11-05 03:17 · Score: 1

What war is this? Ladies and gentlemen, the lack of a cool browser isn't going to spell the end of Linux. Please.

Why do we use Linux? We use it because it's fast, stable, configurable, flexible, etc etc... What isn't Linux? It's not (ahem!) "user friendly" if we use windows as a benchmark for that term.

The world wants that "user friendliness". They don't want stability, etc etc... they want the computer to decide. They don't want to have to think about one single thing other than "where's that cool URL?".

I don't want _that_ OS. I want the OS that I'm using now (which is any one of about 5 Unix variants). If you _really_ want to win the war, create the next version of windows, not Unix.

That will win you the war.

Make something with pretty pictures.

That will win you the war.

Leave stability behind, go for mediocre quality, but don't ask the user any questions.

That will win you the war.

Create proprietary code which is closed off from the real world so that nobody can migrate from it without extreme pain.

That will win you the war.

Spend more money are marketing than development and research. Blind the customer to the fact that it's bug ridden. Charge for each new release of the code. Make sure that previous versions become obsolete.

That will win you the war.

In short ladies and gentlemen: If you want to win this, so called 'war', then you had better stop trying to do it on the high ground. The subjects of this war don't live there. They live in the pit where they get spoon fed whatever corporate america gives them.

Can we stop with this "war" business and get back to computing? Let the general public have their mess. We know the better solution. Unix is not going away... ever. We solve the problems "they" give us, each and every time. A non-cool browser? Heh... big deal.

Cheers,
Quinn

--
os.system("perl -e 'print \"My first Python Script.\"'")

The problem is misidentified by Stargazer · 1999-11-05 03:18 · Score: 1

In each of these cases, Dave's problem has absolutely nothing to do with open information: open protocols are not a hassle, Netscape Navigator is not a hassle, Linux is not a hassle.

The hassle is when things become less open. Java is a hassle. (I find this amusing -- what happened to Java's "write once, run everywhere" philosophy?) Plugins are a hassle. The problem is the fact that people, in their never-ending quest to have their stupid whizbang bandwidth-sucking toys (sorry, I'm admittedly bitter), forget the intent of the web -- that is, if they ever knew it at all.

These people who want their toys don't care about being open. They just care about making their site look pretty. If you ask me, that's pretty silly, since these things are rarely anything more useful than a clip to accompany a news bit, and are most of the time strictly what I call them -- toys.

I know everyone hates a zealot, but if you're going to get anywhere in really winning the war over proprietary web protocols, you're going to have to do at least one of two (if not both) things:

Encourage the developers of these proprietary protocols to open them. You'll need strength in numbers, too. Start pen-and-paper petitions, and send them to brick-and-mortar offices. One e-mail, while better than nothing, won't be enough to sway the green dreams of CEOs.
Encourage web authors not to use these protocols. Admittedly, this is much easier than the first task. Simply tell them: more people can use open protocols, and they're generally easier to develop. Many web authors generally don't need much more of an argument beyond that -- getting to more users and lessening the workload should always be two very big plusses in their books.

Yes, this is very doable. I frequent a web forum, and much to some users' dismay, it relied heavily on JavaScript. With enough complains, though, it works fine in any HTML-compliant browser. It's not that difficult, either. Generally, it isn't really tough to remove the bad parts from a web page -- if it is, you seriously have to question if the site isn't due for a redesign.

So, what are you waiting for? Surely you know of a few sites which could be shown a little light. Go out there and get at them!

-- Stargazer

Re:Double standard regarding freedom to choose an by Daverz · 1999-11-05 03:22 · Score: 1

It's Dave's time; why should he spend it supporting an OS he doesn't like? I'm sure even his wife would not want him to spend his free time on something so upleasant as fixing windows (taking out the garbage may be another issue.)

War, Battle... We still need a free browser by X-Nc · 1999-11-05 03:23 · Score: 1

I don't think the browser is the war, more like a major battle. However we (the linux community) does need to address this issue. We need alturnatives other than Netscape. Free is better but if Opera would ever become a non-vapor product it would still be a major help.

One point, though. The desktop is not the real battle ground. It is important but it's not the biggest place that Linux needs to win. Linux has to capture the middleware and server (I mean Enterprise server) market. Once that's done we will be able to make MS do what WE want. They will have to make their desktop products work or people will not be able to get anything done and they will start to switch to alturnatives like the Mac and BeOS and Linux and such.

At least that's my opinion.

---

--
-- If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.

Re:Corba may be the answer (COM worked for IE) by Keel · 1999-11-05 03:28 · Score: 1

This is how IE works. It uses COM objects that are available for any other app to use as well. That was the central point of MS's defense at the anti-trust trial... and they have a point as much as we all hate to admit it. GNOME and KDE are doing something similar with their object models. Can't stop the tide.

----

--

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"Oh, bother," said Pooh, as he hid Piglet's mangled corpse.

For this discussion, YUP! by Chandon+Seldon · 1999-11-05 03:29 · Score: 2

Your understanding of the reality of the Linux community, and of Open Source projects, leaves a lot to be desired. The Linux Community isn't a corporation, no-one has the power to tell others what to work on. Heck, the Linux Community isn't even an orgainsation (as that would mean that there was some order, there's not), it's a community. What gets worked on and what doesn't is entirely up to the people doing the working.

A charactorisitc of the Linux (OS) software development model is that people work on what they currently need. If someone has a single processor system, they're not going to work on improving multiprocessor support - they're going to work on improving single processor support.

Linux is a fully functional computer operating system for almost any possible purpoise, wether it be a desktop workstation, a web server, or a node in a beowulf cluster doing major number crunching.

Linux, as an O/S, has everything it needs to be perfect desktop machine with three or four minor problems. KDE 2, XF86 4, and Mozilla will solve all of these.

The objective of the Linux movement, if you can even say it has one, is not to build a theoretical perfect O/S. It's to build a usefull, free operating system that can be used for anything that people want to use it for. If people want it to be their pretty GUI appliance desktop O/S, that's fine, and they need a webbrowser for that.

The FreeBSD project, although more centrally organized and with more specific objectives than the "Linux Community", is also a project to produce a free, usable O/S. Remember that in application space, FreeBSD and Linux are basically the same, they both run X, they both need a Window Manager, etc. An app for Linux will run on FreeBSD, and an app for FreeBSD will run on Linux.

As you're not doing central OS develpment stuff, no-one could care less wether you're using Linux or FreeBSD.

--
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.

War, hugh... what is it good for? by Capt+Dan · 1999-11-05 03:29 · Score: 2

Sorry. The lyrics have been stuck in my head for days now...

Ok. So. the article is rather inflammatory, and there is some debate on this whole browser war issue. But the points that come out of it are very valid. The key one is this:

I am making a personal committment to get involved with the Mozilla project. It is the project with the most potential to become this Free Web Browser that we so desperately need. Netscape is NOT going to save us this time. Netscape has failed us, and it's time to take matters into our own hands.

To sum up: GET INVOLVED

Somehow, somewhere you have some free time. Use that time to find a project that interests you, and help out. If nothing else do it to make you r life easier in the long run.

And if you do go searching for a project, pick one of some significance. We really do not need *another* gtk ICQ program, or *another* mp3 player. We do need a better netscape. An earllier post talked about developing a competitor to Exchange. We do need better UI's.

What would happen if all the little developers hacking away on exactly the same thing, dropped those and decended in a massive horde of mad programmin' skillz upon the big projects? Mozilla would be done in no time. The desktop argument would fall by the wayside.

Is there a central website of some sort for project posting? Show up, stick your project idea on the board and get interested people? If so, why haven't I heard anything about it? The apps repositories don't count. Sticking a sentence in a slashdot comment doesn't count either. I talkin' a purely administrative site. www.lets-code.org or something.

"You want to kiss the sky? Better learn how to kneel." - U2
"It was like trying to herd cats..." - Robert A. Heinlein

--
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.

The guy who invented the web... by Kaz+Kylheku · 1999-11-05 03:31 · Score: 3

forgot to support bitmap and vector graphics, frames, etc.

The team who developed Mosaic gave allowed others to embrace and extended to do the obvious things that were missing, instead of putting the software under the GPL. Both Netscape and Explorer have roots in Mosaic. The base code for Explorer came from Spyglass whom Microsoft cannibalized. Spyglass' wares were derived from Mosaic, IIRC. So you can thank the bungled handling of the Mosaic codebase for the current situation, at least partially.

The W3C guys haven't learned any lessons from all this. They still offer source code that can be embraced, extended and locked away into proprietary machine code. Here is a link to the license for libwww and other w3c freeware like the Amaya browser. Their FAQ says this: Yes, we want people to experiment with and improve our software. It can even be used in commercial software. If you make changes for the better, we encourage you to contact its authors. You may not make changes and continue to call it by a trademarked term or misrepresent the origin, capabilities, or liabilities associated with its use. You may make valid assertions, such that it is based on Amaya code, or that it is compliant with a Recommended Specification of the W3C.

They want everyone to follow the standard, yet they purvey reference implementations that can be molded into whatever proprietary shape that the Microsofts or Netscapes of this world care to dream up. It comes to reason that a reference implementation of a standard should have a license that promotes compliance and prevents it from being used as a basis for proprietary extensions.

Re:The guy who invented the web... by Abigail-II · 1999-11-05 23:44 · Score: 1

They[W3C]want everyone to follow the standard, yet they purvey reference implementations that can be molded into whatever proprietary shape that the Microsofts or Netscapes of this world care to dream up.
Well, duh. W3C isn't a standards body. It's an industrial consortium, with Netscape and Microsoft (and others) as members.
-- Abigail

The reason I don't Use Linux by TeChYMaN · 1999-11-05 03:32 · Score: 1

He hit the nail right on the head. The only reason I don't use Linux is usability with the web. I used to glare at the IE user and laugh, until IE4.0 came about. I've tried my best to go about with netscape, to no avail. Until NS5.0 (yeah right because of AOL) we ARE going to be behind in the war. I love my toying machine in the basement running FreeBSD-Current, but I can't but browse the web with lynx. Lets all pray to Tux for a browser of proportions larger than IE.

Re:Proprietary computers by Daniel+Dvorkin · 1999-11-05 03:32 · Score: 1

If Apple charged developers a licensing fee, pretty soon no one would be developing for Mac except, well, Apple. It boils down to economics: games for set-top boxes like Playstation et al sell so well (orders of magnitude more than _any_ application for _any_ desktop OS, last I heard) that it's worth it for developers to pay a licensing fee. I doubt that any desktop OS manufacturer, even M$, could get away with such a requirement; damn sure Apple couldn't.

--
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.

Re:Double standard regarding freedom to choose an by |DaBuzz| · 1999-11-05 03:33 · Score: 2

It's Dave's time; why should he spend it supporting an OS he doesn't like? I'm sure even his wife would not want him to spend his free time on something so upleasant as fixing windows (taking out the garbage may be another issue.)

Uhhh .. because it's his wife and he loves her and wants her to have the best experience she can have according to her needs, not his agenda?

Like I said, she gained no real value from the "choice" he forced upon her ... she actually lost value over time and is now in a worse position than she would have been if Windows was chosen in the first place. This doesn't HELP the linux cause ... if anything, it creates resentment in the same way those who "choose" Windows on their OEM'd PC feel when they have to reboot 5 times a day.

This is the same reason people call this community elitist ... many are so blinded by their own agenda and can't even see the trees, must less the forest or beyond.

Did you read the article... by Camel+Pilot · 1999-11-05 03:34 · Score: 1

Once M$ "owns" the desktop they will be able to easly leavage that position to take over the server market through the use of compelling extensions that only work with a IE and IIS combination.

Re:Browser isn't enough- damn straight by edremy · 1999-11-05 03:37 · Score: 1

I'm one of the webmasters for a chemistry department.

I use a plugin called Chime which embeds 3-d models of molecules into a web page. I use it a lot- it's a tremendous tool. Yes, there are Java programs which do the same thing- they have a 10th the features of Chime and are far buggier and slower.

Guess what- Mac, Windows or SGI only. My server runs Linux, but my lab machines don't and won't anytime soon, simply due to this plugin.

The real problem here is that even if Chime gets ported, there is going to be someone in Physics who has a plug-in they need. Finish that and deal with the ones that bio, math, etc want. It's even more effort than Mozilla...

Eric

--
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"

What war? by sheldon · 1999-11-05 03:38 · Score: 1

Why are you fighting a war? I just want software that doesn't suck, and so does your wife Trish. In your arrogance did you think that the competition would never improve? Did you think that computing technology would remain as it was 3 years ago?

Good point, bad illustration by Shahla+Bright · 1999-11-05 03:38 · Score: 1

I'm sorry that Dave chose to write about the sweet but clueless Trish, "proud" and "privileged" to be using an OS her studly geek husband blackmailed her into letting him install for her, eventually feeling "left out" because Netscape won't let her clip coupons with her friends. Could Dave could have been more patronizing if he'd tried with both hands?

The only thing I share with Trish is the XX chromosome. I'm a professional Linux bore like you -- but for work I need five or six graphical browser windows open all day long. And this afternoon I reached one too many of those (killall -9 netscape; rm ~/.netscape/lock) moments. With my head in my hands, I actually considered -- for more than a few minutes -- pitching Linux entirely and crawling to the supply cabinet for an NT disk.

I'm keeping quiet about my frustration. I'm the only Linux user along my row of cubicles, and I don't want the people around me to get the wrong idea.

But I'm afraid that Dave's illustration will give some self-important geeks-r-us Slashdot readers an equally wrong idea. Browser inadequacy isn't just a tactical issue in some mythical battle for the hearts and minds of people who want a sharp-looking GUI and dumbed-down OS. It's a problem right here on our desktops, and it needs a solution.

And so is an Exchange client. by redelm · 1999-11-05 03:39 · Score: 1

Fully agreed. I can relate that alot of desktops where I work would be still running OS/2 or migrating to Linux/FreeBSD if there were only an Exchange client available.

Yes, yes, MS-Exchanger server can be configured to use POP3. Our isn't, and that option won't last.

But as for missing functionality, I rather do without. Let'em see the customers they're missing. I normally browse with images off, and things have gotten alot better these days. Most images have tags, which wasn't so 2 years ago.

-- Robert

Re:And so is an Exchange client. by Ozric · 1999-11-05 11:33 · Score: 1

I think that trademail is what you are looking for. they are in testing right now and exchange support is not in there yet. I downloaded it a took alook the other day. I hope they get it right. I use linux at work as my desktop, we have a Metaframe Server and I use an ICA client to use outlook and other MS crap.

WE NEED TOOLS by emanon · 1999-11-05 03:40 · Score: 1

IMHO We need some GOOD TOOLS so any of us can clearly see what is happening on the line. Then we can quickly respond to whatever new 'features' we discover from whomever. i.e.- LET'S WRITE a good GNU html, etc. oriented software protocol analyser. To find out what's happening we just monitor the conversation with whatever browser is of interest. Then it would be simple for any of us to add a smart filter, etc.in series with whatever browser we choose to use. BTW - I still prefer 'red baron' :). Isn't this what the microsoft lawsuit was supposed to be about ?

Re:Some web developers are idiots by net_shade · 1999-11-05 03:42 · Score: 1

What about DHTML? Or Client Side XML? Or the latest version of Javascript? Or the [etc].

Functionality as related to information retrieval, yes, you are right - PHP or Java Servlets perform the task perfectly well.

But information presentation....hell, even PHP.net uses DHTML for those pop-up windows in their rollover code. Not to mention the fact that many sites that utilize proprietary extensions are "art" or "showcase" sites, built simply for the fact of presentation, usually with little or no benefit from server side technologies such as the ones you mentioned.

netshade

--
"I could float off the floor if I wished to. But I do not wish to because the Party does not wish me to." - Abridged,

SNAFU by finkployd · 1999-11-05 03:43 · Score: 1

I can't belive I let "desktop morket" get past my feeble effort at proofreading :)

Finkployd

Re:ITS THE STUPID MANAGERS by bkraft · 1999-11-05 03:44 · Score: 1

Tell me about it. Even here where I work, Netscape is being dropped as a web browser within the next year. Even Apache is seen as a bad server because they don't have a million dollar $upport company behind it. What a joke... I don't get it.

--
Brandan Kraft

Try this fix, I had the exact same problem! by NecronomiconII · 1999-11-05 03:45 · Score: 1

Try the fix that is listed in the support pages of redhat's site.. (not too easy to find, had to bump and grind on Deja for a while..)

The following info can be found at: http://customer.support.redhat.com/rhoaprod/plsql/ xxrh_know_pkg.srch2?p_id=316

Product Description Red Hat Linux 6.0/Intel
Problem Description:
I have installed Red Hat Linux 6.0 and Netscape keeps crashing when I reach a page with java applets in it. I have also notices that some of my applications do not display fonts correctly, what is going on?

Resolution Description:
There is a problem in one of the installation RPMS that is causing many systems to not have a complete list of fontpath for X to use.

To see if this is the problem you are facing, please use the command:

chkfontpath --list

You should get output that looks like the following:

Current directories in font path:

1: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled
2: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled
3: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled
4: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc
5: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1
6: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo

You should then add the 75dpi scaled font to your path list using the command:

chkfontpath --add /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi

This should fix the problem you are seeing.. However, if problems persist, check the following as well:

http://home.netscape.com/eng/mozilla/4.6/relnotes/ unix-4.6.html#unix

Funny you should say that by SurfsUp · 1999-11-05 03:45 · Score: 2

...many pro-Linux people I know have been grumbling about the lack of the latest RealPlayer support and other niceties that people in the Windows world take for granted

Funny you should say that. I just add/*removed* Real Player from my Windows NT machine today because it has just come to suck too much. As far as a streaming audio player goes it's not particularly impressive, and really it just takes a nice open format (mp3), sticks its own header on it, and tries to pretend it's handling some kind of amazing super-secret format you can't live without. Then, it hits you with the ads you don't want, the channels you don't want, the registration you don't want to do (complete with rectal examination) and provides no way for you to prevent it from starting when Windows starts. So: out it goes. Enough is enough. I'll stick with streaming mp3, thankyou, or use other players for ra-formatted mp3 audio. And I won't have to put up with the file not being saved to disk by default, so you have to download it all again any time you want to rewind. No thanks, Real Player, goodbye.

--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.

Re:Funny you should say that by m3000 · 1999-11-05 04:15 · Score: 1

But the whole point is moot because if you want to listen to something that uses Real Player, you're SOL. It's just like once site I can't view in Linux because it uses Quicktime extensivly. It's annyoning that Linux does not have that support, and it's also why Windows will continue to be popular as long as it supports more nifty plugins than Linux.
Re:Funny you should say that by mattc · 1999-11-05 05:38 · Score: 1

I also removed RealPlayer from my machine a few days ago, because it kept crashing, and every time it crashed it took netscape down with it (of course this could be a netscape problem). Now I'm using Windows Media Player with Netscape and while it is not wonderful, at least it works. I also think there is a version of Windows Media Player that runs on linux (not joking).

Standards by C.+Mattix · 1999-11-05 03:46 · Score: 1

The key issue is standards. Web designers need to write their code to the W3C standard, and the browser makers need to support that. The problem is that anyone can go pick up an HTML for dummies book and put up anything. This is the double edged sword. I personally use IE4 on Solaris. It is faster and MUCH more stable then Netscape 4.X on the machines. I know that this is flame bait, but it is my experience.
The current netscape for linux doesn't support the DOM very well.
The thing is: WHO CARES????
Write something that does. Right now this entire debate reminds me of a negative political race. Stop talking about what each cannot do, and what is better. The rantings are what drop the credibility of all of us. Stop Ranting and write better software! There is no magic bullet, and like it or not, if it wasn't for M$ there wouldn't be as much progress into the PC industry. Thier money has helped us grow. A lot of the facilities that we use/used in college is because of them. We are NOT at war. We shouldn't want to tear anything down, just bring the bar of softare up. The industry is very Darwinistic. If there wasn't M$ there would be IBM, and they would be the "evil empire."

Free market by pete-classic · 1999-11-05 03:46 · Score: 1

The internet is the ultimate free market. If you want Linux and Netscape to succeed in this market, boycott sites that use proprietary extensions. If you really care make sure that the executives involved know that you are boycotting them.

I don't think that writing the webmaster will make any difference. He answers to his boss, not to stockholders.

It never ceases to amaze me the way a certain segment of Open Source enthusiasts seem to feel that other people should do what they (that is they the enthusiasts) think is right. In my experience people do not respond well to being told what the should do. Microsoft is never going to stop breaking protocols because a bunch of people on Slashdot (who, by the way, are not their customers) keep saying they should.

A better conceived approach would be to convince business running web sites that using non-open features on their web pages is against their interests. Microsoft (and others) will be forced to be open because it will be the correct business decision.

Microsoft is always going to behave as a business, you may stop gnashing your teeth now.

-Peter

But Java isn't enough. by ToLu+the+Happy+Furby · 1999-11-05 03:48 · Score: 1

I found my fabled internet killer app a few days ago.

Well, ok, that's not true; I already had four or five (hell: what would life be without /.??), but that's not the point.

This thing is cool, it could save me oodles of money, and best of all, unlike those previous four or five killer apps, this one was actually useful (sorry /.).

I'm talking, of course, about dialpad.com, the site that lets you make absopositively free (wherein free is used to refer to lots and lots of always-on-top banner ads) phone calls to any damn one in the whole US. Well, so long as they don't, um, have call waiting. Or expect to be called during the hours when people like to talk on the phone.

But I digress--this idea is damn cool. For a college student with lots of close friends spread across the country (hint: me), it's a godsend.

And luckily for all the Linux users out there, it's coded in Java.

Windows-only Java.

Yep.

Now, I have to admit I'm in Win98 most of the time anyways. Still, it's damn annoying to see, and even more annoying that I emailed all my friends, including Linux/Mac users, about it, without even realizing that there was a chance they wouldn't be able to use it. I mean...it's Java! Java is platform independent!! Right?? Platform independent!!! Write Once Run Anywhere!!!!!

Grr...

Now, I'm sure you all will be happy to note that this buggy little Windows-specific Java program freezes my computer with remarkable abandon. And, they say they're working on a Mac/Linux compatible version, so that's nice. Although it does make one wonder why they decided to go with WinJava in the first place...

But the point is, this and other websites like it are very very useful. While we all know and use and love the internet for a whole lot of things that *will* continue to be platform independent, the fact is that the web is becoming a lot less markup language and a lot more code--and not just database code run back at the server, but real, interoperable client-side code. This is a good thing. And with broadband it'll only better. But unless we fight damn hard (and unless alternative OS's continue to get the attention they've recieved the past year or so), most websites are going to take the easy way out and make that code Windows code.

The sad thing is, it's all up to them. Not to take anything away from Mozilla, which I'm quite looking forward to (if mostly from an ethical standpoint; I do have to say that (when it's not running that damned buggy-ass phone applet!) IE 5 is a damned decent browser that suits my rather heavy browsing needs quite well), but the guy who wrote this article kind missed the point when he said that contributing to Mozilla is the solution.

Having the most standards compliant browser in the world isn't going to put all those windows-only websites onto poor Trish's Linux box. Standards compliance generally just refers to making sure everything on a page is displayed the way it's defined to be displayed. It's important, yes--and it *will* add some pages to Linux's repertoire, although only because Netscape 4.x has been such a piss-poor awful mess of noncompliance. (Side note: it's awful slow too.) But the important web pages--the ones that take the web from its current state as an often useful but mainly just endlessly diverting morass of fascinating and inane information, into that ever persistant thing that changes all of our lives, are going to depend on code. Having a port of the best browser in the world won't help a bit.

Now, of course it's not at all hopeless. Java is out there, and it's quite capable, and it can very easily be done correctly. But (and not that you shouldn't all go out and contribute to Mozilla; go--do that), what's going to make sure that Linux doesn't miss out on a lot of the net isn't nearly as complicated as everyone rushing out and working on Mozilla. We just need to get a bit vocal (intelligently and politely, as always) when sites on the supposedly platform independent web go Windows only. After all, we seem to get in a big huff whenever some obscure hack computer journalist writes a brilliant investigative piece that reveals that "Linux only comes in green text on black backgrounds!!"--which is the sort of thing that will have absolutely no bearing on whether Linux makes it in the long run.

The proprietization of the internet will.

Advocate.

Pressure offending sites to comply! by trichard · 1999-11-05 03:48 · Score: 1

I agree wholeheartedly that the availability of a quality browser will help attract and keep new desktop users. But I also agree with those that say that we should put some pressure on the creators of the websites that use non-standard features.

To this end, here is a template of a letter that you can use. It puts this issue in terms that a VP of Marketing, or other non-technical executive can understand, that of market restriction and ROI.

If you come across sites that aren't compatible, find the highest level executive of the offending firm and send this letter. Every bit helps.

*** Begin Letter ***

Dear {insert executive name here}:

To introduce myself, I am a user of the Internet and a potential customer.

I would like to inform you of an issue that prevents you from realizing the maximum benefit from your Internet marketing investment.

When I attempt to visit your web site, I am unable to use the site's features. This is due to portions of its design that render it incompatible with many types of software, including the very popular Netscape browser and the quickly growing Linux operating system. This incompatibility is caused by the use of non-standard, proprietary methods of web programming.

This problem limits the reach of your site and limits the potential market for your service. The result of this is your investment in the web has less overall probability of success than the more compatible sites of your competitors.

Compatibility with these types of systems becomes even more of an issue when you look at the types of people who use this combination of software.

These are the technically astute, early adopters of web based services. These are the people most likely to use the Web for the services that your site offers. This is the last group of users that you should be alienating.

Thankfully, the solution is an easy one. Please see to it that your web features are only implemented with standards based methods. Additionally, please make sure that these features are properly tested on many different combinations of operating systems and web browsers.

By ensuring 100% browser compatibility, you can realize the greatest return on your investment, and millions of previously unreachable users will be able to benefit from your site.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

{insert name here}

*** end Letter ***

Good Luck!

p.s. This letter is fully GPL'd, of course! ;-)

Its going to take time by UnknownSoldier · 1999-11-05 03:54 · Score: 1

> A lot of people were shocked when the Warsaw Pact, and even the USSR itself, collapsed shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I agree. You sort of paraphrased my point.
a) At the time, people thought that Germany would NEVER be re-united.
b) It didn't happen over night. It took time.

Sounds like exactly the same situtation Linux was in a year ago.
a) Nobody thought Linux would ever over-take MS. (We still have a ways to go obviously)
b) We're making progressing.

> Back to the point, I and many of my peers have essentially thrown MS products entirely off of our networks.
Yeap. I use Linux and BeOS at home ;-)
And we use Groupwise at work.

> Some of the tools aren't bad, but they all are designed to only work well with other MS products unless MS is trying to enter a market dominated by others. On the servers, it's easy to mandate Unix/Sendmail/Oracle instead of NT/Exchange/SS, but the desktops are still a MS monopoly.
For now. Things will really start looking great once KDE and GNOME both release ver 2.

> I think free & open software is the exact opposite of the old communist mindset ...
Yeah, I don't buy the Linux = Communism analogy either. I believe a better analogy would be: Communism (proprietary software) places power in the government (developer), not the people (users), which liberty (GPL) does.

Ok, enough politics and Linux ;-)

Cheers

Moderators: How the heck can my post be labeled as 'flamebait' when I mention 'no flames' I thought I posted a civil and thought-provoking article?? (ok the crack about politics and sheep was off-topic, but still)

ActiveX? Superior? by Millennium · 1999-11-05 03:54 · Score: 2

Please explain how ActiveX is superior to Netscape's plugin system. While you're at it, you should try to explain exactly why a system so insecure it can cause web pages to totally erase your hard drive could possibly be superior to one which did everything else ActiveX could do as concerns Web pages, but didn't let pages erase your drives.

Re:ActiveX? Superior? by scrytch · 1999-11-06 00:15 · Score: 2

> Please explain how ActiveX is superior to Netscape's plugin system.

Technologically, they're almost exactly the same. Netscape Plugins on Win32 use OLE2, whereas ActiveX is simply a marketroid word for the same thing (sort of, OLE2 is an ActiveX "technology" that adds on a late-binding dispatch layer, one that isn't strictly necessary now).

Netscape can now autoinstall plugins for you when you hit pages that require them. They can run arbitrary code that can do anything they want to your system. This is *exactly* like ActiveX controls, without the benefit of code signing! Yet why isn't Netscape being nailed to a cross for this? Oh, because they have to be accessable from Netscape's site, giving them more control over the content than Microsoft, which doesn't require the middleman. Why isn't Netscape in the stocks now?

Because they're not Microsoft, that's why.

War this, war that. I'm really sick of these childish games. Real innocent bystanders die in real wars, sometimes millions are slaughtered in the efficient machinery of murder. The War on Drugs, the War on Crime, the War on Poverty, the War on Microsoft. I'm really god damn SICK of the war metaphor, dig?

--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.

wrong URL by dgoodman · 1999-11-05 03:57 · Score: 1

oops.
try this: Tim

the other link worked, it just took you to the front page, instead of directly to the Tim page. heh.

Give us a better metaphor. by Bilbo · 1999-11-05 04:04 · Score: 1

> I appreciate where the author is going here, but the whole war metaphor is getting old. Think in constructive terms instead.

Then give us a better metaphor. Seriously.

I agree that we have to take out sights off "beating" Microsoft. However, like it or not, they do a pretty good job at defining what people's expectations are for computers. It's not because they have such great products, or because their vision of the future is all that insightful, but simply because so many people are used to the features they have laid out on the table.

Call it mind share or attention or corporate backing or VAR support or plugins, Microsoft and Microsoft-only applications are sucking up resources. Do you want to have plugins that work for all the Web pages you surf? How many times have you tried to get at multi-media content only to find that "You appear to be using an unsupported platform"? It bugs the TAR out of me when I can't use QuickTime or RealAudio (it core dumps on my sound card) for anything.

If you want your Linux computer to be as useful to you as a Windows computer, you are going to have to fight for resources. Call it a war or call it something else - it's going to take a significant amount of effort on our part to make it a success.

--
Your Servant, B. Baggins

Absolutely Correct by drunkenkatori · 1999-11-05 04:04 · Score: 1

While I may disagree with some of the details
of the strategic analysis, I know exactly what
the author is talking about. I use linux at
work and prefer it, but the browser is not just
a tool to view the outside world, it's a tool
for communicating and collaborating in the work
environment. To keep up, I have to struggle and
tweak my workstation and that's not what I'm paid
to do.

Unfortunately, it's not the browser weakness, it's
the Java weakness that sinks interaction with
the web. This in turn affects ecommerce which is
just as important in business to business transactions as consumer ones.

If the desktop role is important, browsing has
to become solid, reliable and fluent.

DK

Mozilla is a new paradigm. Don't ignore it. by abram_fettig · 1999-11-05 04:04 · Score: 1

Hello all.

In the midst of all these opinions, I would like to voice mine.

Mozilla is a very important project. Important for the future of Linux, important for the future of the web. The reason does not have to do so much with Microsoft or Netscape, but with different theories of web design and browser design.

Ever since Netscape 2.0, both Netscape and Microsoft have been attempting to increase the popularity of their browsers by adding "features" to the HTML standard that only they supported. Some of these "features" have made HTML better and more powerful. Some (like IE's MARQUEE tag) have been laughably bad. But in any case, they have tried, with each new browser release, to expand the HTML standard, and by doing so to draw people to their product.

I think that it is a mistake to look at Netscape as the good guy in this regard. Netscape has tried just as hard as Microsoft to add proprietary extentions to the HTML standard.

In recent years, the W3C (an independent, nonprofit organization) has developed a clear set of standards for HTML, and these standards include the abilities to use powerful features like Style Sheets and Dynamic HTML. Netscape's support for these standards has been downright awful. Not only have they failed to fully implement CSS1 and other standards, but they have once again tried to add their own extentions (namely the downright evil LAYER tag) to the HTML standard.

In fact, the reason that many developers (myself included) prefer to target IE for our intranet applications is that HTML has come a long way in the last 2 years, and Netscape has not kept up. IE is, in fact, much closer to the W3C standard then Netscape. When Netscape fails to render a page correctly, then, should the blame be put on the designer, who wrote proper HTML but didn't check it on Netscape, or the browser, which fails to render the code correctly? I'm not talking about Flash, Plug-ins, or VB here folks: I'm talking about javascript, CSS, and DHTML, all of which are based on open, independant standards.

However, Mozilla represents a paradigm shift for web browsers. Mozilla's cheif goal, as a pure web browser, is to be completely compliant with all the current standards. They are not trying to extend HTML, but conform to it. This is as it should be. HTML is a language. It has standards. Why is it acceptable for a web browser to not meet these standards? For example, (and I may be getting myself into trouble here because I'm not a C programmer) how would you feel about a C compiler that failed to compile common commands correctly? I don't think you'd tolerate it, even if the compiler included support for exiting new commands that were not part of the C language.

By making a completely standards based, cross platform browser, Mozilla is paving the way for the future of the internet, when it won't matter what O/S or browser anybody is using. Any page written according to the HTML standard will display correctly on anybody's machine, and we'll all be able to communicate.

So, to wrap up:
Mozilla is important for Linux. Why? Because the future is coming where having a standards compliant browser will be the most important feature in defining a "real" desktop operating system. Yes, even more important than a good Office package. The web is only going to grow in importance, and with mozilla Linux users - as well as users of Mac, Windows, and other operating systems - will be able to enjoy its full potential.

Thanks for letting me put my two cents in.

-Abe

Re:Mozilla is a new paradigm. Don't ignore it. by SonofRage · 1999-11-05 05:52 · Score: 1

Damnit, I like the marquee tag.

The Problem isn't the Browsers by shinji · 1999-11-05 04:12 · Score: 1

The problem is not the browsers. The problem is the standards. By which I mean their are none. Microsoft implements java and java-script different than Netscape. Netscape didn't fail us, Microsoft hi-jacked Java and Java-script. And Sun took them to court for it. I've been reading alittle more about XML and that is a step in the right direction but it does nothing for Java or JavaScript. The Web is a multiple platform data exchange...web masters and programmers (I am one) need to treat it this way. We need to say damn it Microsoft (or anyone using some closed system), I refuse to use this. Code your web pages so that all people can read them. I guess I should qualify this maybe you don't want to support very old browsers or maybe you do. But don't use CLOSED standards. Only use open published standards so that anyone can write a browser able to understand it. My pages look just as good on linux with netscape (where I write them) as they do on Windows with Netscape or IE.

--
Remove the spam reference to email

That's about right by MadAhab · 1999-11-05 04:14 · Score: 1

More and more sites use flash, but even that works for me (linux NN under FreeBSD). I use hushmail sometimes, and the java works fine, and is far from trivial.

So if there's a problem, it's incompetent programmers or sites designed by people who really don't understand the web at all. Watch out for them. They are the types who say "Can't you adjust the kerning in this text?" and then look at you suspiciously when you say no. It would be funny if it didn't happen so often.

Solution: Complain to the webmaster! Complain to customer service! Complain to the ad sales department!

--
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.

Re:That's about right by sec · 1999-11-05 05:53 · Score: 1

--quote--
More and more sites use flash, but even that works for me (linux NN under FreeBSD).
--quote--

Well, I know it's out there. I just haven't yet seen a compelling reason to install it.

I'm sure there are exceptions out there, but from what I've seen, a SF animation screams out, "This site is content free, but maybe if I show you a cool animation, you won't notice that!"

Web Designers Need to be Educated by SwedishChef · 1999-11-05 04:20 · Score: 1

My school district has a dozen Linux computers. In a year it will probably have 100 Linux computers (especially with the new pricing of Win2k). Web designers need to understand that if they want maximum exposure, they need to design their pages for the greatest number of browsers. This nonsense of "looks best with netscape 4.6" or "best viewed under Windows Explorer" is insane.

On the bright side, the recent litigation launched by advocates of the blind for access to web pages may be good news for the Linux community as well. Lynx is already a popular tool for the blind and I've noticed that even some Linux web sites do not provide alternate links to their graphical ones.

In short, in the scramble to have the whizziest web page, the designers have lost track of the fact that there are others who deserve access.

However, even though I have to kill -9 Netscape a couple times a week, I still prefer it to a Win platform.

--
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!

Re:Ouch! by ocie · 1999-11-05 04:23 · Score: 1

Besides which, it is fairly easy for a mojority player to add non-compatible options and increase their hold. It is hard for a minority player to do the same. Add a special netscape/apache feature to 10 sites and IE users just won't use those sites.

--
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere

Re:Browser isn't enough- damn straight by Cacophony · 1999-11-05 04:27 · Score: 1

I think the best way to save this is to have the new netscape come out with new features that IE is not capable of. It'd have to be something really cool so that webmasters would want to use it. You release the new netscape for both linux and windows and windows and linux users will be going crazy for it so they can see the great new features that have been implement on sites. You'd wanna give the information on implementing this to a few very popular sites before the release date so that customers can use it as soon as its released.

The best would be to get aol to implement it into it's service, there we have a few million automatic netscape users, a group so large that webmasters can't afford to ignore them.

Just my thoughts,
-Al-

Why can't they just release a PRODUCT????? by net-fu · 1999-11-05 04:28 · Score: 1

Ok. I've seen Milestone 10... it downloads... it renders. Can we get a web-widget?

I'm sure that the folks at kde could use a libMozilla for kfm. (Which works pretty well on its own, btw.)

What about gmozilla for Gnome based on the Mozilla library?

I believe that great things are going on over there, but when are we going to get the goods? Any goods? Why go for the whole sh-bang (email, www, nntp) when the functionality that people out here are bleeding for is not that vast in scope. It would also allow existing developers in other areas to contribute to the project... and produce PRODUCT.

-- waiting for libMozilla.so

If we lose the broser, we will lose the war.

backup plan by Xkill_ · 1999-11-05 04:30 · Score: 1

OK here is the plan, Plan A). The boys from netscape keep cranking out Mozilla... Plan B). The boys from Wine keep working on Wine, with help from Corel etc. If we cant beat 'em, join 'em... Plan C). The people from Vmware will continue to improve upon vmware. If we still can't beat 'em we will pay money to join 'em. I figure that we have alot of tricks up our sleeves still. So the world is not as bleak as some people say. However the longer we wait, the more dearlt we will pay....

"The importance of using technology in the right way has never been more clear."

--

Umm.. Opera, Anyone? by Tyketto · 1999-11-05 04:30 · Score: 1

MS, Netscape, MS, Mozilla. those are not the only available graphical web browsers, that can support what is available. Now, granted, that they are the most known, have the most features, etc. Those two browsers, actually the CAUSE of major problems. Reason: Marketing. They let themselves be known through very good marketing, that they are the two best browsers on the market today, regardless of Open source, Binary only, etc. Because of that, people have been making sites, only suited to those browsers (best viewed with yadda yadda). That is why there is the Anybrowser Campaign. The WWW is supposed to be for the internet, regardless of platform. Now, the two big Browser companies, have made it the complete opposite. So, What do you do? How do you get what you really want out of the Net, with a browser, that is trully in the medium?

Answer: Opera. The graphical brower, for the Anybrowser Campaign. All the functionality of Netscape, and IE, without the bloatedness of those things that "only those bowsers would accept", in a high end, robust, non-crashing browser. I've been using it for the past 3 months, and am enjoying it. Development for this, for Linux is still in the works, and is just about ready for a full Beta test. This is also being ported to Be (beta already available), OS/2, EPOC, Amiga, and other OSes. Take a look at it, at www.opera.com. You won't regret it.

BL.

Re:Umm.. Opera, Anyone? by Ichoran · 1999-11-05 06:03 · Score: 1

Exactly what I was thinking, until /. ate my post and gave me time to see that someone else had already mentioned it.
It would be rather ironic, though, if Windows users could get a free usable browser while Linux users had to pay for theirs.

Domination by MS is the issue by jflynn · 1999-11-05 04:33 · Score: 2

Linux has a clear path to a good market share of servers, I think. It's excellent as a small to medium server, and it just makes too good economic sense not to be successful there. It's server capabilities are also increasing rapidly, especially from the commercial contributions to the kernel. So I think Linux can be an extremely successful OS while failing to achieve total desktop domination. But if Microsoft controls HTML it won't happen.

Unix always has, and probably always will, be the most appealing to students, developers, engineers, and scientists. Take it apart and figure out creative new ways to put it back together people. MS Windows on the other hand tends to appeal to businessmen and home users. Don't tell me about it -- I'm not paying to learn -- just make sure it works and all I have to do is push a button people. These are quite different sets of people and *both* have a realistic notion of their needs. The problem is in either Microsoft or *nix trying to force one set to use the other's tools. That should only be possible by satisfying the underlying needs responsible for both choices -- something neither side is fearfully close to yet. All I want to see is that those 10-30% who prefer Unix have that choice, and are supported with drivers and plug-ins.

Now, I'm optimistic about the Linux desktop personally. I'd always been a DOS command line person anyway, GUIs have never impressed me as powerful enough, though I use them. For my money, if you develop software, the best place to do it is in something Unix-like like Linux. It's entertainment like the web and games that keep me dual booting.

The bit about lack of plug-ins is true, but hardly fair. That sort of thing follows desktop success, it doesn't precede it. As hardware drivers are now coming thru for Linux, so I expect plug-ins to follow.

Having to recompile your apps? Well, yes, *having* to can be a pain. Being *able* to can also be wonderful when it's needed. No worse than having to re-install Windows occasionally surely.

The desktop standards thing is interesting. Do you remember when Norton and another company sold competing Win3.1 desktops? Much the same problem there. Microsoft of course settled it in their usual fashion by driving both, though superior, out of the market. I think in the Unix world, there is a possibility for something better, choice of desktop with full interoperability of apps. It won't come soon, but it will NEVER happen with Windows, Microsoft wouldn't permit it.

The issue is one of critical mass. There have to be enough Linux desktop users to make supporting them commercially attractive, or at least feasible. I would like to see fixes for the problems you mention, but I have to agree with the article, the lack of a browser is the most critical problem at the moment on the desktop front and standards front both. It's not an attempt to dominate the desktop, it's an attempt to maintain a foothold in the client space for fear of being embrace-and-extended out of the server space.

Paradoxical logic by jeremy+f · 1999-11-05 04:34 · Score: 1

>>We follow the standards. Microsoft make their own.

Standards have to be created before they can be followed.

We need to go further than that. Let's make the next Mozilla 100% compatible with the latest version of W3C's HTML standards, and add in all the features that makes IE a superior browser in Windows.

Once that's completed, we need to take it one step further. Let's start creating our own standards. Let MS, for ONCE, have to catch up to US. Why must it constantly be the other way around? Don't add in features that will ultimately break the browser, but add in features that will enhance & elevate Netscape / Mozilla's functionality above IE's. WE need to be the innovators, the creators of dreams, those who create the magic that entices the average Joe to use our software.

Good guys don't always follow the rules, and vice versa: those who follow the rules aren't always the good guys. Remember that before you make that kind of statement again.

Re: Paradoxical logic by grolim13 · 1999-11-05 14:33 · Score: 1

Mozilla doesn't have the market influence that IE and Microsoft have unfortunately gained. There are very few webmasters out there who would make Mozilla-specific pages, even if it were possible. Of course, if IE wasn't shipped with Windows this would not be the case.

Netscape Sucks by DanielNiklasWood · 1999-11-05 04:34 · Score: 1

Even nominally having a browser isn't really enough if netscape really thinks that we aren't important. Here is a script that I wrote a few days ago.

#!/usr/bin/perl # # Netscape really does suck. This is a script # that runs netscape and when it crashes it # runs it again while( 1 ) { $rc = 0xffff & system( "netscape" ); if( $rc == 0 ) { exit 0; } # It crashed. unlink "~/.netscape/lock"; system( "date >>~/.netscape-sucks" ); }

See the results (so far).

stop freaking out by krusader · 1999-11-05 04:34 · Score: 1

would everyone please stop freaking out.... we seem to forget that microsoft is completely screwing themselves over by their new pricing system. what oem in their right mind wants to pay $200 for the base os? and what lan admin is actually friggin stupid enough to pay $2000 for a 2000 pc lan when all they wanna do is run an intranet web site?

Bizarre idea for you by Spiv · 1999-11-05 04:38 · Score: 2

Okay, I have a strange idea that might be able to work.

I noted that recently on Freshmeat, someone had found a way to play VQF files in Linux, even though the only way to get a player is through getting a Windows .dll from the Sony website.

How? By using Wine. The plug-in talks to Wine, and Wine passes that on to the (Linux) music player.

Could the same principle be employed for this? The API for Netscape plug-ins is surely basically the same between Linux and Windows. Give the plug-ins a way to be able to execute in the new environment, they may never know the difference.

I suspect this could be achieved through a "wrapper" plug-in, that translates between the plug-in for Windows and the browser for Linux. Even sound could be made to work, I suspect - Wine is pretty nifty these days.

The main problem I see is that only x86 Linux people will benefit from this. This is, however, the main market, and at least having it there will help "win the battle".

If only I knew more about Wine... or had some spare time :) - I'd really like to see this happen, if at all possible.

Comments?

Re:Netscape != Standard by josepha48 · 1999-11-05 04:39 · Score: 1

I never said that Netscape was the standard. It makes it hard to design web sites that take advantage of the best of both features, when one browser or OS does not get that feature supported, and it makes for a world wide 'suck' when sites require you to have this or that to view there site.

eg.. go here -> www.globalenglish.com with windows and then go there with linux if you can and you will get a good idea of what I mean.. there are 2 different sites, and one basically states you must have windows.

I have been to M$ site with IE2.0 and guess what .. you cannot get anywhere with it. There own site does not support there own browser, so how do they expect you to upgrade?

Stupidy runs rampant on the WWW....

send flames > /dev/null

--

Only 'flamers' flame!

Americans with Disabilities Act for browsers/Web? by Sprocketeer · 1999-11-05 04:47 · Score: 1

Obviously a USA law like the ADA could not apply to the World Wide Web, but could disbility advocacy groups be educated and encouraged to add their voices to this debate?

Perhaps sites that won't work with Lynx could be shamed into cleaing up their act.

Perhaps this could bring some heat on Microsoft.

Ditto. by daVinci1980 · 1999-11-05 04:49 · Score: 1

Mr Woo-

There is an irony to your post. You claim to hate malinformed posts, yet you yourself have just posted an entire truckload of crap.

What a wonderful fact. Unfortunately it's incorrect. If you look at the server stats all across the web, you will see that IE is definitely winning the battle. Anyway, Communicator 4 and IE 4 were both released under equally free terms (and equally large downloads) so your argument about the cost of running either is vacuous.

I love this. You understand of course that not all traffic has to go to external sites, right? At my company, the most efficient way of recieving information from another group is typically the web. I can get information from employees in India, England, France, or down the hall by hitting their websites. None of this is recorded in statistics regarding web traffic. But the fact of the matter is that again the COMMERCIAL sector, meaning Industry is MUCH larger than the PRIVATE sector. (Or, home users.) Why? Its numbers. See my original post.

And Free to you, a home user != free to Industry. Where do you think Netscape makes their money? If they gave away their product to Industry, they'd go broke. They sell licenses to companies like mine, where using the free version of Netscape would be a violation of their TOS. (And we could get sued out the wazoo.) The same is true for IE. To use IE for business purposes, one must have a license, which must be purchased.

Second, assuming blithely that Windows is all smoke and mirrors, and will remain so forever, is simply a mistake. If you really believe that the tens of thousands of programmers at Microsoft with IQ in the 130's and up are incapable of producing a decent product, you need to re-examine your assumptions.

Who do you think writes kernel code for Linux? Infinitely many monkeys typing on infinitely many keyboards? Jiminy Christmas! The same brains from industry are the same people who contribute to the kernel for Linux. Plus we get the benefit of countless college professors, students, and freelance coders. I guarentee you that every one of the programmers who write code for Linux are every bit as talented and more than those at MS. And there's two major differences.
1) Linux programmers work for love. There is no higher motivation. Ask any employer at any company.
2) Whereas there aren't actually 10's of thousands of programmers working on the Windows OS, there actually are 10's of thousands of coders working on applications for linux. And more importantly, every user of Linux takes part in the most important step: Debugging.

Please visit my web page for more information. Its not finished yet, but you'll get a gist of what I'm talking about.

Oh, and finally, I'm not suggesting that the community be complacent with where we are, but rather that we continue on with what we're doing. With every user, we gain more and more momentum. This is anything but complacency.

--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."

--
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.

Re:Ditto. by Chuck+Chunder · 1999-11-05 06:11 · Score: 1

I love this. You understand of course that not all traffic has to go to external sites, right? At my company, the most efficient way of recieving information from another group is typically the web. I can get information from employees in India, England, France, or down the hall by hitting their websites.
This is irrelevant to the point the article is making. In the closed environment of your company it is possible that Netscape is being used enough it makes sense that people ensure their pages are viewable by it.

So what? The www is no such closed environment and the stats seem to be heading ie's way, which one way or another disenfranchises Linux users.

Linux/Open software are fighting many battles. Linux is continuing to kick some arse in the server battle. Gnome/KDE & some pretty cool window managers are making interesting inroads into desktop space. But until Mozilla crystallises into something useful the proprietary OS-specific internet explorer is going to make life more and more difficult on the world wide web.

--
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Re:Ditto. by coredog · 1999-11-06 08:45 · Score: 1

You are somewhat correct when you state that IE is not free for use in a business environment. Hey, you gotta pay someone to install it:)

Seriously, MS will _give_ you the IEAK for under $10. All they ask in return is a quarterly statement of how many installs you are doing. Not free, but not the $30-40 that NetScrape is used to charging in that market.

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Do anal-retentive people hyphenate 'anal retentive'?

Clickable link for lazy people :) by patrikr · 1999-11-05 04:56 · Score: 1

http://www.mnemonic.org/

--

--
All Glory To The Hypnotoad!

Everything worthwhile is possible... by MrBlic · 1999-11-05 04:56 · Score: 1

Sometimes it just takes a little patience...
As for Netscape disappearing when Java starts,
I just found the solution for this one a couple
of days ago... Going to netscape and searching
on Java and Crash... it tells me:

There is a problem in one of the installation rpms that is causing many systems to not have a complete fontpath for X to use.

to add the required font:
chkfontpath --add /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi

Now Java is working beautifully...

I personally wish that Linux had a mostly-unhackable license manager available. This would let my software development company consider releasing a Linux-based version of our software.

Let me know if I have simply overlooked something that is already available...

Once companies have great copy protection for expensive Apps, many commercial developers will hop on the train.

I personally use KDE, and like it... but I can't
wait for a next-generation Knowledge-based UI!

Let's make a huge leap over the Desktop paradigm and take the world by storm!

--
Celebrate Excellence!

Re:A web developer's perspective by gargle · 1999-11-05 04:56 · Score: 1

I've been trying to develop an application where the Java applet on the page communicates with the Javascript on the page i.e. basically *Netscape's* Liveconnect technology.

The ironical thing is, IE 5 actually works much better with this technology than NS -- NS has all sorts of strange, erratic missing objects errors (which sometimes go away after you reload the page several times), or fails when the pages get too complex.

I want my app to work well with both NS and IE, but NS makes this extremely difficult...

A couple things... by michaela · 1999-11-05 05:05 · Score: 1

I've reread this article several times now and a couple things keep nagging at me.

A) It would have been nice to see some references to the problem sites. While I wouldn't consider myself a power surfer, I can't recall any sites having crashed my browser that weren't doing something funky. Poorly written ActiveX, bad JavaScript, etc will cause problems in nearly any browser.

2) I keep getting stuck on one paragraph:

Microsoft owns 99% of the web browser market share, and they control the HTTP protocol. They start adding a huge variety of features to their "Internet Information Server", their competitor to Apache, to offer advanced features to Internet Explorer clients. At this point, sites being served by Apache become useless. Then Linux becomes obsolete as a web server platform. Then Microsoft wins the war, and we're right back to square one, and proprietary technology wins again.

Since when does Microsoft (or Netscape for that matter) control the HTTP protocol? Granted they have a considerable amount of input, but control? (And don't we really mean the HTML spec here?)

How exactly do features added to IIS make my Apache served site useless? Suddenly my site is obsolete simply because it isn't pulsating with techno music and the text doesn't leap about?

I think not.

--

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That is all.

I use Netscape on Windows; no problems, ever. by Venomous+Louse · 1999-11-05 05:09 · Score: 1

Like, zero.

You can't even just use netscape on windows, because IE's javascript is different from the specs, etc.

The only time I've noticed a difference was with yahoo mail; for a while in a new job I couldn't figure out (duh) how to configure Netscape for their proxy thing, so I used IE -- and IE kept fucking up trying to cope with the javascript in the yahoo mail site. After a few days I figured out the proxy thing and went back to Netscape, because I found IE to be just kinda generally annoying, in addition to their broken javascript. I suppose it's a matter of taste.

Netscape 4.x is bloated and goofy, God knows. It's certainly not perfect software. Nevertheless, let's at least be accurate in criticizing it. I don't seem ever to have seen a single one of the "LOT" of sites that I'm apparently "shut out of". Some examples?

--
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --

Re:A Browser is a program by ronfar · 1999-11-05 05:16 · Score: 1

All a browser is is a program, it's not that much different than a WordProcessor, Spreadsheet, etc. It really is not part of the OS, despite Micros~1's claims to the contrary. Just as there are some in the OpenSource community working on a great little program called Gimp, there ought to be some in the OpenSource community working on a browser. It's a program that runs in an Operating System, not a part of the operating system, itself. The fact is, I have a perfectly sound ftp program for Linux, but I don't have a sound browser, because the Web has changed so much. But that is no reason to trash the idea of coming up with a decent browser for Linux.
As to "lowest common denominator," if you are talking about Web TV, well I don't think much of Web TV either (it's a crippled computer). On the other hand, if you are talking about the average person who isn't obsessed with computers but would like to use them for various things, well, I disagree with you. As to "knowledgable users" do you really mean knowledgable users or users who are willing to spend what it takes to make sure that their computer hardware is Linux compatible? Some people can't afford the latest hardware, and some of those people are in fact knowledgable users. Money != Knowledge

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All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)

Why a release-ready Mozilla will be great by Imperator · 1999-11-05 05:17 · Score: 2

First, the release will generate massive quantities of good publicity for OSS.

Then AOL will get out of Microsoft's bed (or MS will have court-imposed changes as a result of the antitrust suit) and integrate Mozilla into their client. As it filters down to their members, a huge number of IE users switch to Mozilla -- many without even realizing it.

As I understand it, Mozilla's policy towards standards-compliance is "we'll honor the standards, and if you don't we can't guarantee that we'll handle your crap correctly and it's your problem". Suddenly, a large percentage of the audience of noncompliant sites is using a compliant browser.

The noncompliant crap is fixed when a large number of people can't use it.

End result? Return of the Standards.

--

Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.

Re:Browser isn't enough- damn straight by Danse · 1999-11-05 05:20 · Score: 1

How would this help? The new features would have to be open source and Microsoft could simply make an open source plugin for IE. Then IE users don't need to switch.

--
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer

You are mistaken. by Wah · 1999-11-05 05:21 · Score: 2

This is why.
Every day it gets bigger, more robust, and more difficult to stop. Eventually MS will have to bow out to Linux not because Linux will declare war on Windows, but because Windows will simply pale in comparison.

Eventually no one (outside the hardcore geeks) wil l use anything other that IE because that's what works on all the web (if current trends continue and they ARE moving this way). A computer without the 'Net is fairly useless (IMHO), the best way the access the 'Net is through a browser. The browser becomes the most important part of the machine. M$ has realized this and is pushing hard to make the browser the OS and build special hooks so that IE/IIS/Windows is the only way to really access the 'Net.
Having surfed the 'Net extensively on both browser on both platforms there is No Question that M$ has a superior product with VASTLY superior third-party support.

You see, one of the most important differences between Windows and Linux is that Windows is all smoke and mirrors (marketing) whereas Linux is an product that is actually well made and capable of delivering on its promises. The public will grow tired of the illusion sooner or later, its all a matter of time.

Every TV show/Movie you have ever enjoyed is mostly smoke and mirrors. Most people DON'T CARE and are more than happy to use smoke and mirrors. Besides, windows (despite it's very many flaws) does work most of the time. I'm a gamer and the doze does games great.

The article illustrated a very good point, people want stuff that "just works", when sites don't they get frustrated and will go back to the herd. Having the pre-eminent browser is the first huge step to desktop acceptance. If you don't want that, then this argument is moot anyway.

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+&x

Please cite an example of... by LocalYokel · 1999-11-05 05:28 · Score: 1

"... Microsoft owns 99% of the web browser market share, and they control the HTTP protocol. They start adding a huge variety of features to their "Internet Information Server", their competitor to Apache, to offer advanced features to Internet Explorer clients. At this point, sites being served by Apache become useless."

I know IIS pretty much inside and out, as well as the capabilities of Internet Explorer/deficiencies of Netscape, but cannot think of a singe feature that makes IIS friendlier to Internet Explorer than any other browser.

--

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E2 IN2 IE?

Re:Please cite an example of... by The_Messenger · 1999-11-05 19:38 · Score: 1

I don't think it's the fault of IIS as much as the page authors... kiddies using Frontpage and adding glitzy special effects, like dissolving page transitions, nonstandard mouseover Jscript effects, et cetera. But I think the majority of the problems are caused by everyday inter-broswer issues with HTML rendering; less and less authors are bothering to test in Netscape...

--
--
I like to watch.
Re:Please cite an example of... by LocalYokel · 1999-11-05 22:19 · Score: 1

That's what I thought, too.

FrontPage is a bigger problem, but if you know what you're doing with it, it isn't so bad. I use WYSIWYG for design, and a text editor for coding -- WYSIWYG gets everything laid out quickly, and can be tweaked in scripting code (static content sux). A web page is just a document, and I see no sense in making a web page manually coded, but a report for school/work being done entirely in an editor.

Don't fight FUD with FUD, get the facts straight. IIS does nothing in favoritism to Internet Explorer, and neither does Netscape.

--
--
E2 IN2 IE?

It's not always the websites's fault... by pod13 · 1999-11-05 05:29 · Score: 1

Sometimes, Netscape crashes or otherwise fails to render pages correctly because of it's own non-compliance with web standards. Case in point: try designing a web page using CSS. An interesting article about this is at A List Apart.

I guess a lot of people are waiting for-- and hoping for-- Mozilla, for a lot of different reasons.

--
-- .sig cancelled due to budget restrictions...

Re:It's not always the websites's fault... by paul.dunne · 1999-11-05 18:04 · Score: 1

It is rather ironic that an article about Netscape's non-compliance with web standards displays nothing but a blank screen when viewed with lynx.

Re:B&N: You're not talking to the right people. by Enzondio · 1999-11-05 05:35 · Score: 1

First off, I don't think he was implying that that was the literal response from the support guy.

And if you've ever actually worked tech support and had to deal with people saying "Well why would my computer do this, I thought Windows was supposed to be the best," you might actually understand this. I'm not gonna bullshit people, I'll tell them, Windows isn't that good, it has a lot of problems, I'm sorry. A tech support rep's job is not to tell people what they wanna hear, it's to tell them how it actually is.

Make a better product then! by Severity+One · 1999-11-05 05:36 · Score: 1

People are probably going to kill me for this, but I chose to use Internet Explorer, simply because I think it's a better product. It surpassed Netscape.

Sure, Microsoft's market monopoly sux major big time but that doesn't imply that they make bad products.

I started using MSIE on my Sun Solaris workstation, because I wanted the same software regardless of the platform I was working on.

Personally, I found that IE was more stable on any platform, and better sticking to the standards. Yes, you read that right. Try creating some HTML 4.0 or CSS, and see what browser complies best. I've tried it and I know it.

I try to keep the religious arguments out of it. You won't win a war with an icon of Linus and the Holy Book of 4.4 BSD in your hands. Make a better product. There's nothing to be gained by using Netscape, just because it doesn't come from Redmond.

My dream is to seperate user interface and application. Use a browser as your GUI! I couldn't care less what browser that would be. I just know that IE offers me the best possibilites at this moment...

You can beat them by creating something new. Make a standard that uses Netscape as the GUI and communicaties over TCP/IP with the application. That's how you can win.

- Peter

Linux should run win32 browsers by ikekrull · 1999-11-05 05:40 · Score: 1

I think the real solution to this problem is to make WINE run IE, as well as all the multimedia plugins. You could run Win32 Netscape, Opera etc... sure, there'd be a performance penalty, but Windows itself comes with a hefty performance penalty, and that doesn't seem to stop people from running it. Linux shoudl be moving to 'Embrace and Extend' the Win32 platform. Easier said than done, to be sure, but this would certainly make Linux a moe attractive platform to many people. Hell, if connectix can do it on a mac (Virtual PC) why can't we do it on Linux? Anyone have any idea how far away WINE is from being able to run IE?

--
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long

Absolutely correct, sir. by mbj · 1999-11-05 05:43 · Score: 1

So maybe in addition to trying to help Mozilla, we should also begin pushing Apache wherever possible. If we can get more sites to use Apache, we can at least take out those IIS incompatibility problems. Web developers, IT and IS guys and gals out there, if your company isn't using Apache yet, suggest it. Implement it. Because if we fail, we WILL lose the war.

Who cares if realplayer doesn't work by SurfsUp · 1999-11-05 05:45 · Score: 2

But the whole point is moot because if you want to listen to something that uses Real Player, you're SOL. It's just like once site I can't view in Linux because it uses Quicktime extensivly.

No, the point is that I personally don't care about Real Player any more because it's gotten way too commercial and annoying to use. Wait for it - Real Player will be superceded soon by something more to our taste, and with the added benefit of being open source and running under Linux.

About 2 years ago I stopped using Hotbot because it got just too annoying, for the same reason, even though it was still the search engine with the best query interface. This year, miraculously, along comes google and is the answer to all (or most) of my prayers. Worth waiting for. In the meantime, I slummed and used altavista (fast seach but horrible interface and lousy presentation of results).

I can see Real Player is headed the same direction - don't get too attached to it. I guess at this point I'll just surf around and find something that can decode streaming ra files. Or I'll wait. It's not that we've got so much time on our hands we have to spend it all listening to ra files ;-)

--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.

Re:I hate articles like this one... (NOT!) by Razz · 1999-11-05 05:53 · Score: 1

Theory: The web is based on standards, anyone with a browser can play.

Fact: Most webmasters would like to have to deal with (1) OS and (1) browser. Most want whiz bang features. Most consumers don't care as long as their computer can run all of the whiz bang plugins. This all works in M$'s favor.

We need to make sure that Linux has enough of a desktop presence so that it is in the webmaster's best interest to make their site Linux/Netscape compatible. We need to give LOTS of feedback to the sites that do not support standards and/or Linux users.

Linux is my desktop of choice, but I don't care to be a 2nd class web citizen.

=Razz

The squeaky wheel gets the lubricant.

Free? by On+Lawn · 1999-11-05 05:58 · Score: 1

As I recall, (and I researched this myself) that Netscape Navigator, and IE are both free whether you use it in a company or personaly.

The liscence wording is pretty dificult to decipher but its there (it uses like a triple negative). We used in the company I worked for as the intranet browser for free, legaly for example.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~ ~^~

Alternative Web Browsers by Luke+B.+Bishop · 1999-11-05 06:01 · Score: 1

Just wanted to toss this at everybody. Here at Nanosoft Technologies, we're developing a brand-new entirely C++ widget set for Xwindows. Now I know many of you will just groan, but in truth, we have already succeeded in creating applications in a handful of lines using it. This is MUCH easier than gtk+... And fully OOP.

While our current page hasn't been updated in a while and will remain like that to mask our efforts, we are planning on writing a web-browser once our widget set is finished. With an extensible, dynamic framework. If something is missing, it can quickly be added.

The key to our design: Stability. This is why we still haven't made a public release of our current line. We are stress-testing everything, down to the simple classes that are too small to ever break. With our design standards, and an OOP framework (with special RAD tools and toolkits), we will have a workable web-browser eventually.

Of course, we are still anywhere up to a year from release date. But just wanted to mention it.

--

-- For large values of one, one equals two, for small values of two.

preach it... by Error27 · 1999-11-05 06:02 · Score: 1

the way i see it (without being any smarter than the average joe, mind you) is that you are right on.

the internet browser could be broken up into dozens of usefull programs. This would make it tons more flexible and easy to program upgrades for.

this is my dream browser.

the browser would have just the top list of things [file][edit][view][go]

then it would have the quickie buttons. [back][reload][forward][home][bookmarks] if these can all fit on the top line, then that's the way to go. (i like to save space on my tiny screen.)

then you would have a location to type addresses in [http://slashdot.org ]

that would be the default setting.

if you wanted more buttons you could add them and program what they would do with perl scripts. kinda like shortcut keys. i'd have a button for [www.informit.com] maybe one for [search page]

after the toolbar everything else would be handled by other programs. (it's time the browser learned to share)

the video and sound part of the browser are obviously reusable.

the same thing for anything to do with graphics.

AND your standard html interpreter could [imho] have plenty of uses outside of the browser.

the documents for a bunch of files i have downloaded are already in html form. take that one step further and make a tiny fast html interpretter, and there is no reason why most of text can't be rewritten in html. man pages could be rewritten with hyperlinks and fuzzy graphics that would make newbies feel at home.

you wouldn't want a tool bar for this, just the text, a couple buttons, a graphic. if the there was any video in the html-ized man page it would have to call up the video program itself.

adding on features to this browser would be easy.

the script parents would get to change all the naughty words would be about a page long, written in perl.

someone would have a spell checker program going.

plus you could program your own buttons to do anything.

this idea has problems and it's not thouroughly thot out. but to me this seems like a pretty cool way to do it.

Re:preach it... by radish · 1999-11-05 16:10 · Score: 1

Hey - you just described IE5. Hate to admit it but...all the components of IE are just generally available COM objects. So the HTML renderer, Java VM, GIF viewer etc etc are all system level and available for use by any application anywhere. All the IE window does is stick them together in the familiar browser layout. You can customise the toolbar (AFAIK). M$ already use the same HTML renderer for Online Books, the Visual Studio documentation and standard online help (i.e. man pages).

I agree with a previous posting, ppl might just hate M$ for being M$, but at least with IE the architecture is pretty nice. Of course it's BIG problem is ActiveX with respect to security. That is pretty awful and shows the limitations of the ActiveX (or OLE as it was) model. Still...maybe one day they'll fix it...

--
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Re:preach it... by scrytch · 1999-11-05 23:01 · Score: 2

> Hey - you just described IE5. Hate to admit it but...all the components of IE are just generally available COM objects.

AND you can script those components with Perl. Or Python. Or Javascript, C++, Delphi, VB, or even freakin Haskell

Unix can only claim superior scriptability at the moment because it has a passable scripting language as its command shell (some better than others, ksh has better typing for example). But what it can't do is script individual components of a program in any language that has a native interface. Want to embed a browser component in emacs and remote-control it with elisp? Fat chance.

Yes, yes, this is all promised with gnome and bonobo and corba corba uber alles. But so far, like mozilla, it hasn't produced any deliverables. I'm not even impressed with the stability of mozilla under win32.

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I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.

Dave == dick by IDispatch · 1999-11-05 06:02 · Score: 1

"I will give her a Windows computer, but will offer nothing in the way of technical support or training assistance."

Yeesh, talk about Linux uber alles. Time to find a nicer guy, Trish?

Exactly. by Craig+Davison · 1999-11-05 06:03 · Score: 1

Starting with IE 4, IE's javascript support was better than Netscape's... which is ironic because Netscape invented the langauge.

--
Hands in my pocket

Why all the extra fuz in Mozilla? by Gfld · 1999-11-05 06:07 · Score: 1

One thing i don't understand, is why the put things like mail reader, news reader in the damned browser before it's rock stable.

Why use the time on the fuz instead of fixing the bugs and making the thing do what it's supposed to do.

Just my oppion ... sorry if this has already been answered.

oh dear...... by Pinky · 1999-11-05 06:14 · Score: 1

LEt's open source everything! That way, micrsoft can take over the world without doing a thing. mouhahaha!

Reminds me of that famous trust exercise when some one falls and the other catches them:

Netscpace: Hey this falling and being caught thing looks fun. HEY GUYS CATCH ME!

Weeeeeee

Programers: What the hell was that?

Re:Corba may be the answer (COM worked for IE) by Eric+The+Read · 1999-11-05 06:15 · Score: 1

In fact, GNOME *uses* CORBA already-- that's what ORBit is-- an ORB for Linux.

-=Eric

oh dear...... by Pinky · 1999-11-05 06:16 · Score: 1

LEt's open source everything! That way, micrsoft can take over the world without doing a thing. mouhahaha!

Reminds me of that famous trust exercise when some one falls and the other catches them:

Netscpace: Hey this falling and being caught thing looks fun. HEY GUYS CATCH ME!

Weeeeeee thud

Programers: What the hell was that?

Treating incompatible sites by Menthos · 1999-11-05 06:16 · Score: 1

I recently had an experience with this.

I've set up a Linux box for my somewhat computer-illiterate dad. Works perfectly fine, the only thing he uses the computer for is to visit some stock market web sites and online stock trading. And with some neat icons on the desktop for this matter and some first-time guidance he now manages this just fine.

Some weeks ago, however, he saw an URL for a new stock web site in an advertisement. He wanted to try it out, but it neatly krasched Netscape every time. You guessed it, it seemed to be a java applet that krasched Netscape when rendering the page.

I mailed the webmaster, and kindly explained the situation for him, with as many technical details I could, and that it would be wise to make the site accessible for non-Windows users too. The day after, I got a kind response from the site manager saying that he was sorry for any inconvinience and that he would let the web site developers look into it.

Then I forgot about the whole thing, until some weeks later, when I played around with my dad's computer again. This time the site (and the applet) worked. The site was still a pain to read (small, fixed font) but it would at least load.

So I guess that the best way to treat "incompatible" sites is just emailing the webmasters and kindly explaining the situation. Don't be afraid of explaining exactly what makes the site incompatible, since most web developers don't test the sites on every platform. They test it in IE and maybe Netscape on Windows in different resolutions and that's it. Maybe, if they're serious, they also test it on Macs.
Linux / BeOS / UNIX? Naeeee... never heard of it. You mean we actually have site visitors that uses those systems? You've got to be kidding.

Ok, there are developers that test their work under whatever browser/platform possible. But those are few. It is a pain in the *ss to test web sites extensively - so I don't blame the developers for not wanting to test everything. But if they start getting attention from some visitors, or preferrably the company that ordered the web site, saying "hey, we've got some mail recently from visitors saying they could not access the site, what's up?" things will happen.

Remember, dont hesitate to mail them. But be polite.

--

GNU/Linux. The Freshmaker.

mozilla is **very** far along by browser_war_pow · 1999-11-05 06:21 · Score: 1

You think that they are running behind schedule? Well let's see how fast Microsoft could rewrite COM, IE, a new plug-in architecture, messaging client, email/news software and a wysiwyg editor. All for MacOS X, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, OpenVMS, BeOS, MacOS classic and for other toolkits like QT.

Games, Games, Games. by Davorama · 1999-11-05 06:23 · Score: 1

The WWW has long passed games in importance to the consumer but I still say games are an area that should see alot more attention too. My personal view is that if some well established company (ID could pull this off) released their next big, garunteed-to-be-a-hit, game for Linux first and witheld it from windows for a month or two there would be a huge migration over to Linux. Nobody would do it. It doesn't make good business sence to piss off a majority of your customers that way. But it's fun to think about... :)

--

Davo -- Free speech, free software, AND free beer.

Re:That's what Java is FOR, DAMMIT! by Victim12 · 1999-11-05 06:40 · Score: 1

I wish Java worked on BeOS. So for now, Python is my platform indepent language.

What if we lose by Googol · 1999-11-05 06:49 · Score: 1

Let's start with the realistic assumption that we loose the war. Web browsers work only on Windows. They are a proprietary technology that we have to work around. You cannot exist as a modern human being--do your shopping, banking, whatever, without a Windows box.

Now what do we do?

This is insightful? by Carnage4Life · 1999-11-05 06:52 · Score: 1

So either you are at a site that has no animations, graphics of any sort or sound (wasting time) or your at a site consisting mainly of text with a few png/gif/jpeg files.

That's dumber than my idiot professor who broke down the population of atlanta into white, rich and against public transport AND poor, black and for public transport for a supposedly ENLIGHTENING debate.
Go to this website to see a site that makes your argument irrelevant.
http://www.plumbdesign.com/thesaurus/

Bad Command Or File Name

Huh? by Daniel · 1999-11-05 07:06 · Score: 2

Ok, I very nearly said this on LinuxToday, but I've decided to be flamed by a wider audience ;-)

Let's assume that the author's "nightmare" scenario comes to pass: IE suddenly becomes the dominant browser and all major websites decide to lock out users of non-IE browsers.

Will gcc's backends all suddenly commit electronic suicide in despair? Perhaps Emacs is going to decide it's Lisped its last? I assume that Linus, Alan, Andrea, and the thousands of other people who've worked on the kernel will pack up and leave. X, of course, will stop working when the Microsoft takeover alters the fabric of reality, as will FTP, SSH, and CVS. And of course every bleeding window manager will suddenly suffer a fatal heart attack (except wm2 which no-one uses anyway) apt will spontaneously combust, ext2fs will cease to function, the RFCs will self-destruct, Python will be a dead parrot, mpg123 will be silenced, GnomeI-See-You won't, and Freeciv as we know it will cease. All SMTP traffic will immediately halt; Exim, Postfix, and Smail will be outlawed; mutt and all lesser email clients[1] will start requiring stamps to be inserted into the floppy drive; and everything will be a general mess. Plus Microsoft will send people over to my house to demagnetize all my disks.

Yes, I can see how this will affect my life in a very significant and direct way.

Daniel

[1] Everything else.

--
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!

Media Player by Menthos · 1999-11-05 07:10 · Score: 1

I also think there is a version of Windows Media Player that runs on linux

Nope, I at least can't find one. Check out the Media Player download page. Maybe you're thinking of the Macintosh version.

Or, on the other hand, you could be be partially right. If I remember it correctly, when MS first created Media Player they said they would make it the de facto player and create versions for multiple OSes, I even think they mentioned Linux, but since then then they seem to have changed their mind, and at some stage renamed it to Windows Media Player. The only port there is to see seem to be the Mac beta port.

--

GNU/Linux. The Freshmaker.

Requirements Creep. by robl · 1999-11-05 07:29 · Score: 1

ARGH!

Linux was never meant to be a mainstream OS. And why was it never meant to be a mainstream OS?

Because UNIX IS NOT USER FRIENDLY. As long as the kernel is intertwined with GNU Unix, it will never be. The issues are just too complex for most people. Just try to explain to your Mom, how to ifconfig your lan card and set up IP routing to go through the gateway. (And don't say, "oh my mom can do that, maybe you need a new mom". My mom sure as hell can't do that, and I don't need a new mom, either. ;^)

And the funny part is that no one is even attempting to create an Easy-Linux disto. Sure there are winlinux distros coming out and Caldera Open Linux, but I still wouldn't give those to my Mom to use and expect her to know how it works. And don't think COAS is a solution, because it's not, and neither is linuxconf.

Linux was built from the ground up as a windows alternative. The problem was that the people who were building it up originally were Unix natives, and really just wanted a Unix-like system that they would have more power over than with Windows running on their PC's. And now, other people using Linux are expecting it to be a mainstream platform. In it's current condition, it will never be.

Oh, btw, the creators of Linux succeeded with their original goals. I now have more power over my box than I did with Windows, but ease of use was never an original design goal. It is the cause of some Linux factions that are turning this into a war with MS, battling tooth and nail until the very end. The original idea of linux was to be an alternative OS to Windows. Now we're battling for the desktop. And in the industry, we'd call that Requirements Creep.

An observant person might note that Windows really has the same problem in reverse. It was meant to be easy to use, but has problems being a true powerhouse OS. And in this sense, it costs money to do things that somone can do on Linux for free, and in many cases have an easier time at it. When I fiddle around with MS Word, I often yearn for the commandline tools I have with linux to search the document, or to do a regex substitution. And then I think how much simpler it would be with linux at least until the next glibc upgrade comes out.

Furthermore, in the OS market, there are lots of battles that could lose the war. Office Apps is another biggie. Even if we have a nice browser, we still won't have the office apps. Ease of use is another. So is stability and compatability with existing hardware.

Lastly, I have a solution to the problem your wife experienced. If a site wants to ignore 5 to 20% of a potential market by using incompatible Java code on their servers, fine with me. They certainly won't get my business dollar, but rather a letter of complaint, "Because your site didn't work with my browser, I bought it over at Brand X's site instead." A few of those will turn some heads in the Sales Department.

Just stop trying to convince people of something that Linux is not. Okay? You'll sleep much better at night.

--R

What is needed by Ugmo · 1999-11-05 07:37 · Score: 1

I have read the posts that were moderated up and they say that Linux doesn't need a browser. Linux needs a nice GUI. We are not at War. That if I, as an individual, like the current feature set of Linux it need not change yadda yadda yadda.

The truth is Computers and Software are subject to the Networking Effect. The more people that use them the more valuable they are. This goes double for Open Source Software because the best motivation for an Open Source Project is when a user wants to do something on Linux, finds he can't and then sets out to add that ability. That's how you get new software. From users who are also programmers.

10,000 whiners on some internet forum wishing they had a free version of some utility doesn't make that utility appear out of nowhere. 1 user hacking code does.

That is 1 USER. Not some programmer being paid to work on a project he doesn't like on an OS he hates. No USER, No program. More USERS more programs.

If we don't attract and keep other users, Linux will wither and die. Some people may like to see that. They would like to be one of the proud few that hack Linux. Well, they can join the guy I know who has an old VAX in his basement. Really cool guy, but what the hell is the VAX at home good for? Can you play Quake on it? If we don't have the ability to get full use out of the Web with Linux then no one in the future will use it. If no one uses it why bother porting QUAKE XXXV to it? Or anything else? It will shrivel and die. The dream will be over. And you will have to pay Microsoft in order to sneeze.

Re:ITS THE STUPID MANAGERS by WORLOK · 1999-11-05 07:41 · Score: 1

No. Our webmaster is always trying to switch our web hosting servers from UNIX to IIS because he is computer illiterate without his point and click tools, and why learn to do anything if a Micro$oft Site Server wizard can create something acceptable in no time? One of the major problems is that M$ creates these easy to use "fluff" tools that integrate well with MS-SQL, Exchange, etc... The UNIX crowd seems to be missing this crucial point. These guys know jack shit about stability or performance, they just want their fluffy stuff, and if IIS/Site Server provides it, then that's what they want.

I actually told a room full of these people at a meeting that they were going to change my site from BSDI to IIS over my dead body, and if they want to do it then get a consultant and count me out. This, unfortunately is not going to win the war either.

Please somebody create webservers and SOME tools to stem the tide of these webmaster morons moving to M$ products, please?!?!?

==============================
Windows NT has crashed,
I am the Blue Screen of Death,

Web Design and the advantages of 98, sadly by BlueCalx- · 1999-11-05 08:18 · Score: 1

I'm one of the people who maintains www.ticalc.org, a website dedicated to Texas Instruments calculators and their bevy of programs - and I use Windows 98. I've thought MANY, MANY times of using Linux. Fact of the matter is, Linux is just better in my opinion, but what keeps me coming back to 98 is the constant support that you see for programs under it. Eight members currently work at ticalc.org. Of those, three have Linux and only one doesn't have Windows (the others dual boot). All of us (except the one hardcore Linux user) all use IE as our primary browser. Why? Simple - out of all the browsers out there, IE provides the most amount of support for, well, everything! I know it sucks, but we [being the staff] have to deal with it, as there's just no comparable alternative out there. The problem I see here is not just a browser issue, but rather an issue with compatibility in general. Keep in mind the fact that even though Macintoshes are superior hardware-wise to PC's, it currently seems like they'll never gain a permenant grasp over the market as far as software support goes. Too many programs are unique to Windows for this to happen. This is the same for Linux. Over the past many years, we haven't yet seen Macs with the same degree of compatibility as PC's. It doesn't look like Linux will get that way anytime soon. Until then, I'll wait. We'll all wait. And when it happens, Microsoft will be *dead*. "It's the software, stupid."

--
-- BlueCalx | http://nickd.org/

Re:Not quite. Remember: the web is market driven. by Stormin · 1999-11-05 08:22 · Score: 1

I agree. Most of the people I personally know who do web sites (save for pure artistic types, and they're the minority) aren't very bright. I don't know if this is just my luck or it's that way everywhere.

The web designer where I work considers himself a god of all things web. However, he

- Did not know of the existence of text based browsers at all until he saw me using one
- Did not know that there are browsers other than Netscape and IE (read: Opera, Arena, Mosaic, etc.)
- Has no idea why the Web was invented (remember, he knows everything there is to know about it)
- Beleives the web is there to make people rich quick.
- Beleives he is a programmer since he can copy javascript from other people's source and force it to work, without any understanding of how or why it does what it does.

His work is full of assumptions on how a browser will respond... assumptions that BREAK on Linux, and could just as easily BREAK on IE 6.

As long as people like that are building web pages... the web will be limited from reaching its full potential.

war? what war? by Nabuchodonosor · 1999-11-05 08:56 · Score: 1

"IF we fail we will lose the war".. uhmm.. what war? What war for gad's sake????

--
---> Did you know Linux stands for Linux Is Not UniX ?

Re:I hate posts like this one by Cyberfox · 1999-11-05 09:04 · Score: 1

Greetings,

Fascinating. I've been a professional programmer for 20 years, and every single programmer I've known disagrees with your statement:

People make better software when they are paid to make it. This is their job, not their hobby.

Every programmer I've ever known acknowledges that the code they write for their own use is generally better, more complete, more interesting, and more extensible than the code they write for work. Remember, THEY have to use it, whereas the code they write for work just has to be used by others.

Reality doesn't jibe with your preconceptions.

Cyberfox!

Re:ship it by Shillo · 1999-11-05 09:22 · Score: 1

This reminds me of kernel-2.2. Sure, it took two years. Was it worth the wait? Definitely.

Mozilla is *not* going to be shipped before it's ready. I've played with the latest releases, and I can only say I'm impressed by what it does (hint: incremental table rendering - you can read Slashdot page with 200 comments in a second that it takes to fetch the first comment, while it proceeds to read the rest of them). In fact, surfing the web with Mozilla is as exhillerating as it used to be with Netscape-1.0 after Mosaic.

So, I for one prefer to wait for a browser that is a killer than to get almost-Netscape-but-not-quite-there rushed hack.

---

--
I refuse to use .sig

Actually... by billr · 1999-11-05 09:26 · Score: 1

qwerjkl,

Actually, IE's Javascript comes closer to the ECMA standard than Netscape's does. Or at least it did when I last reasearched it (about a year ago--too long I know).

Everybody,

Mozilla is important. More important than anything else. Those of you who think that Linux will do great because you can modify the source code are mistaken. Eric (whats his last name?) in a recent article compared open source software to a car. Because anybody can work on their car. Bull! It takes a lot of training, know-how, experience and equipment to repair cars.

I know how to get into a car, turn the key, push the pedals, and egads! shift the gears. I can't repair them. I'm not intimidated by the thought of working on my own software, but I don't have the time to commit to it. (If you're going to flame me for that, consider that I have a 10 month old daughter. Coding is fun, but it just doesn't stack up (pun intended))

My mom knows how turn the computer on, move the mouse, and push the keys on the keyboard. Even the concept of what source code IS is foreign to her. In fact, it took solitare on Windows 3.1 for her to get over her fear of the mouse! :)

Mozilla is important because it is THE interface to the internet.

L8R

--
I've finally found the off by one erro

Re:Don't be such a whiner and doom and gloomer by ScumBiker · 1999-11-05 10:41 · Score: 1

Actually, you'd be suprised how much DOs crap is still being run. I know of at least 25 workstations on our network running DOS only, just to access a single app that nobody has bothered to re-write. I don't think it's cheapness so much as it simply works, so why change it? On the other hand, I would love to see more plugins ported to Netscape on Linux. Or a version of Opera for Linux that had them built in. To bad I'm not a programmer, simply a hack who runs networks. I'd jump in in a heart beat.

--
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---

Re:Ouch! by shaggs · 1999-11-05 10:53 · Score: 1

Ok, first off, Your whole argument was based on things that a windows browser can do that a Linux browser cannot. Mozilla has no plugins either man. It's not netscapes fault that Macromedia doesn't make the flash plugin for the Linux platform, or certain java sucks, and won't work. The plugins are the problem, not the browser. If the plugins were out there, this article would never have been written Secondly, Mozilla is the most bloated piece of software out there. it's like 750M while building, it's absurd. Mozilla, is afterall, Netscape. It's just called Mozilla cause you get the source. I would never use an M$ OS cause I got more web browsers with it.

This is lame.

Re:Double standard regarding freedom to choose an by d^2b · 1999-11-05 13:15 · Score: 1

How much can we blame Microsoft for forcing consumers and OEM's hands regarding OS choice when we do the same thing for no reason other than to spite them?

Don't forget that there are some of use who don't actually know how to use Windows. Yes, we could learn, but probably there are more rewarding things to do with our time. My previous operating system was Multics...

The Office War by smallpaul · 1999-11-05 14:16 · Score: 1

My wife has many of the same problems, but it isn't with web sites. It is with office documents sent by co-workers, friends and families. Those formats are explicitly proprietary and much harder to crack or work around.

This is wrong by grolim13 · 1999-11-05 14:30 · Score: 1

I have used Netscape 3 Gold for Linux and it hasn't crashed on me once. I have also used Netscape 4.5 for Windows, and it crashes occasionally. I have never used IE3 or IE4, but I have used IE5 and it is ... not very good. As far as I have noticed, Netscape3 and IE5 can both render almost all pages on the web, with the exception of Java pages and Plugin pages. (I avoid pages using Plugins even under Windows, and I almost always have Java turned off.)

Lynx manages to render most pages on the 'net, and if you run it under X11 it can render graphics, too.

No matter what you do to Mozilla for Linux, it won't be able to use Microsoft's latest OLE/VB/whatever plugins. Microsoft seems to have polluted the Java standard, unfortunately, which means that Mozilla probably has a fair bit of catching up to do.

Microsoft does not (yet) control the server standards, except indirectly through the FrontPage extensions. I am not sure exactly what the purpose of these are. It is perhaps more likely that MS will pollute the internet mail standards, with more and more people using `free' services like Hotmail.

Daves RIGHT - IE is available for Solaris! by in8 · 1999-11-05 16:23 · Score: 1

Daves hit it right ON. As have many others noticing that THIS is a CORE application in determining the success of Linux.

In a former job, programmers installed IE on a Solaris Box, much to my sadness - becuase IE just did somethings better for these users.

In my personal experience with NS 4.7 and RH 6.0 I experienced lockups (with Java and JS disabled) and what appeared to be a failure to release memory resources. I have never experienced problems as bad on the win95/98 version of NS 4. IF MS leads in Java/CSS/XML with IE the rest of the platforms (inc linux) WILL always be a distant 2nd choice.

RealPlayer PluggedIn Files Sites >:- by nito · 1999-11-05 17:15 · Score: 1

One of the things I hate the most is when the idiotic webmasters put a RealPlayer file (that I have the ability to view under Linux) as a plug-in, without providing a link to the file or URL so it can be viewed with an expawned external viewer.

Damn! How much would it cost them to add a simple link.

Damn you all webmasters that use plug-in mode only!
___________________________________________ __________

Make the browser better, plugins will follow by Mr.+Hankey · 1999-11-05 18:59 · Score: 1

The main reason a reasonable person would not want to use GNU/Linux and UNIX as their standard web browser is not the lack of plugins, or the large amount of RAM it requires (although that is definitely a shame.)

It's simply that the most advanced browser available under GNU/Linux and most UNIX machines, Netscape Navigator, is not nearly as stable as one would expect from a typical Linux app. It also needs to conform better to current standards, and introduce support for new ones such as the PNG image format. This much at least is obvious.

Now, if it happened that Netscape/Mozilla were extremely stable - as stable as one would expect from a typical GNU/Linux or UNIX app - fewer people would become frustrated with browsing the web in this environment. That alone would translate into many more people using these OS' for browsing.

When the amount of people using a platform increases beyond a critical mass, they start to get noticed by the webmasters and site designers. The same thing happens with plugin vendors, witness Macromedia's Flash plugin for GNU/Linux. As the number of people using GNU/Linux for browsing increases, and we have good reason to believe it will, this trend will continue with both site designers and plugin vendors. It's all about demand.

None of this will happen, though, if the browser is unfriendly to use. An application which crashes frequently is _not_ friendly, this is much of the reason I don't use Windows myself. Why should we expect less from our applications than our OS?

By extension, why should we contribute less? Some people seem upset with the Mozilla license. However, Netscape gave GNU/Linux credibility early on by porting Navigator, a rather large show of good faith on their part. They've even given us the source. Now it's crunch time for the Mozilla project, and they could use help. It certainly couldn't hurt to return the favor.

The man has it dead on, we need to support the Mozilla project as much as possible. Otherwise we'll be left in the dark on the web, which after all is where GNU/Linux is traditionally strongest. Let's not give up the home turf :-)

--
GPL: Free as in will

You need more than: "rock-solid" desktop by garoush · 1999-11-05 21:09 · Score: 1

1 and a half years later, this browser is still nowhere near completion. There is a band of rebels working feverishly on the code, trying to bring it to a usable state as quickly as possible. Plagued with problems and set-backs, Mozilla continues forward, currently at "Milestone 10"... It time to realize that to win over M$ you have to win your customers. Is there anything on this planet that we humans made which is "rock-solid"? NO. Are consumers only accepting "rock-solid" product? NO. Are consumers buying those products? YES. Why? Life is short, consumers want to enjoy it as much as they can -- if they wait for the "rock-solid" product, they will get nothing but more waits. So its time to realize that consumers want "features" and "up and running in no time" capability more than anything else and they want it "yesterday". Do they care where it came from? NO. But if you give them those two elements, they will come back day after day.

--

Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private

"rock-solid" means nothing by garoush · 1999-11-05 21:10 · Score: 1

1 and a half years later, this browser is still nowhere near completion. There is a band of rebels working feverishly on the code, trying to bring it to a usable state as quickly as possible. Plagued with problems and set-backs, Mozilla continues forward, currently at "Milestone 10"...

It time to realize that to win over M$ you have to win your customers. Is there anything on this planet that we humans made which is "rock-solid"? NO. Are consumers only accepting "rock-solid" product? NO. Are consumers buying those products? YES.

Why? Life is short, consumers want to enjoy it as much as they can -- if they wait for the "rock-solid" product, they will get nothing but more waits.

So its time to realize that consumers want "features" and "up and running in no time" capability more than anything else and they want it "yesterday". Do they care where it came from? NO. But if you give them those two elements, they will come back day after day.

--

Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private

Re:That's what Java is FOR, DAMMIT! by elflord · 1999-11-05 21:56 · Score: 1

Java, "platform independent" ??? Well, that's news to me.

One of the big problems with Java is that while it's architecture is platform independent, that doesn't really help much if Java itself doesn't run on many platforms.

And the truth is, java does not run on so many platforms. For example, I can't run Java apps on OpenBSD because there are no decent java implementations for it. Even Linux suffers from second rate java support ( partly because Sun refuse to support linux versions of their software ). IMO, Sun dropped the ball by not getting behind a JDK that would work *well* on any platform. Perhaps "platform independent" is another way of saying "windows or Solaris".

Netscape is more to blame than M$. by Abigail-II · 1999-11-05 22:10 · Score: 1

I am getting sick and tired of blaming MSIE of the downfall of the web.

It's Netscape's fault. The web was ruined by Netscape's way of ignoring standards long before M$ realized what the web was. If it wasn't for M$ and MSIE, the "fast forward a year" would be already have happened. Except it would have been Netscape monopolizing the market, and not M$.

From the begining, all Netscape was interested in was making money, by dominating the market. Remember the early years, where you actually had to pay for your Netscape browser? (Ok, hands up, who was not a software pirate and downloaded Netscape and paid for it? - and don't come with "non-commercial use wasn't free", because it wasn't.)

As for third-party, platform dependent plugins, you cannot blame Microsoft for that. Plugins were a Netscape invention; and third-party plugins are, well, third-party plugins. Of course, while the cubicles of Netscape housed some programmers that were interested in porting Netscape to as many platforms as possible; the company itself mostly looked at the Windows market, as that's the only platform of interest when you want to dominate.

The browser war is over, and there isn't a clear winner. Which is a good thing.

-- Abigail

Re:ship it by scrytch · 1999-11-05 23:27 · Score: 2

> not crash very often

You lose. I had the displeasure of running M10 on win98. First immediate annoyance: mousewheel doesn't work. Reflow is decent, a damn sight better than netscape, but not as smooth as IE. Some images got placed slightly off, I could actually see the placeholder and a piece of the ALT text where the image should have been.

But when I selected several items off menus, it was always crash, crash, crash. And not from failed assertions, mind you, but invalid page faults. Meaning this thing has null or stale pointers all over the place, possibly even buffer overruns. Does expect that these are just going to all get fixed so long as we just chase 'em out and patch 'em as we hit them? If that kind of ad hoc methodology is driving Mozilla, it doesn't have a prayer.

--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.

Re:Thanks to win98 they have allready won by scrytch · 1999-11-06 00:17 · Score: 2

I have been telling you guys here at /. for over a year now that linux could die if ms rules the internet.

You all laughed me off or called me a troll.

I'm still laughing, and I still think you're a troll.

--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.

Re:Corba may be the answer (COM worked for IE) by greenrd · 1999-11-06 00:49 · Score: 1

Ever tried to include IE or IE components in another app? Apparently the whole thing is so badly designed, veering wildly away from even MS's own published COM/OLE standards, that MS programmers have had to do really godawful hacks to get embedding to work half-correctly. So I've heard.

--
Female Prison Rape in NY

Re:Is a BROWSER really the issue...? Yes it is. by dbrown · 1999-11-06 02:44 · Score: 1

Linux was/is built around the internet. If Linux lacks a modern browser, Linux is dead. Yes, getting a good gaming base would help, but it certainly didn't help the Amiga. Linux needs good quality end user applications. A modern browser is the most important one.

The future of computers is the network. If Linux lacks the features to interact with the rest of the world (no matter what platform the other side is), it will die.

One of the goals of the Linux community is to get Linux on the desktop. Mortal desktop users do not care about 64bit file systems, IPv6, and they especially do not care about parallel processing.

Just look at Dave's wife. She is the one of the types we are trying to convince to use Linux. She didn't care that Linux had stable multiprocessing or process control. She just wanted to have the same experience as her friends.

That's the idea of the internet: COMMUNITY. Without it, Linux is dead. Read Judge Jackson's FOF about Microsoft. He concluded that one of the main reasons that people buy Windows is because "everyone else" has it too. People buy it because they think there is a community out there.

If Linux bends over for the lowest common denominator, I'm going FreeBSD, and so will all the people developing for Linux

This is the mentality that will kill the Linux movement. Just because the next step in technology was not developed open source does not make it inferior. Technology will advance. If we choose not to keep up because we think that we are "too good", we have only proven ourselves to be stupid and arrogant.

We need a good browser.

Windows Fatigue by Byter · 1999-11-06 05:58 · Score: 1

Maybe Dave's just TIRED, as *I* am, of having to support Windows...getting blamed when it craps out again and won't do something even though it should be able to, and corrupts itself and crashes and doesn't install correctly...and we, with all of our computer knowledge can't do SHIT because it's all closed and all propritary and made by people who think that "User Friendly" means "Don't give people ANY options...assume EVERYTHING..and then blow up in the fucking middle of the install when one of your stupid assumptions aren't met."

There's a REASON that we switched from Windows to Linux, and yet, we get pulled kicking and screaming into windows idiocy by clueless family members (and unfortunately) people that we actually love like our wife.

His policy of not giving support for Windows idiocy saved his wife AND himself from 3 years of torment, and now he's being forced to go back to windows idiocy by clueless web site operators...otherwise his wife wouldn't feel a need to go back to windows.

I think that his policy of only supporting Linux was correct...it taught his wife what REALLY WORKS and what is REALLY STABLE. He's angry as hell because that is being changed, not because his policy wasn't originally correct.

Before you say that he is mean, think of all the pain and suffering he saved his wife from for 3 years.

Way off-base by John+Goerzen · 1999-11-06 08:24 · Score: 1

This a is so far off-base that it ought to be in the "humor" section. Why? Let's look at several points.

Free Software has thrived for years and years without having a web browser or even marginal control of the general "desktop".
Having Mozilla will not address even one of your concerns; binary-only plugins for Windows will still not work on GNU systems.
Having multiple useless examples of bloat in the GUI will do nothing either. Having a clean, powerful system will.
Marketing is not the ultimate answer as you seem to think it is. Marketing is antithetical to what we are all about.
Finally, you miss a fundamental point: Free Software is not about winning any war or even a battle. It is not about competition. It is about Freedom. Period.

Re:Corba may be the answer (COM worked for IE) by coredog · 1999-11-06 08:25 · Score: 1

So you've heard, eh?

In a word, no. Are there some things that suck?
Sure. ActiveX documents have been dropped like a dirty sock. But the actual WebBrowser component works like a charm. It is extremely simple to
create your own version of IE (GreenRDExplorer?)
with VB or VC++. I can't admit to having done it with VJ++ tho ;)

Think for yourself or don't think at all.

--
Do anal-retentive people hyphenate 'anal retentive'?

What happens when stupid people write /. articles. by John+Goerzen · 1999-11-06 08:32 · Score: 1

You're exactly right. For a classic example of how you can make an excellent site that looks great on everything from Lynx to the latest graphical browsers, please surf on over to my site at http://www.aclug.org/. As a hint: most pages validate as standard HTML. None use extensions. All images have ALT tags. I specify a doctype. Cookies are used in a few spots but never required. Graphics are strategically reused to maximize caching.

It really isn't that hard to make a snazzy site that is quick to load and works with every browser.

stuff that just works by GlenRaphael · 1999-11-06 09:19 · Score: 1

The article illustrated a very good point, people want stuff that "just works", when sites don't they get frustrated and will go back to the herd.

Exactly. For instance, I just bought a laptop computer. On the basis of size, weight, quality of the screen and a few other factors, I picked a Sharp Actius PC-280. It came with Windows 98 on an 8.1 gig hard drive. I figured with Partition Magic and a few install CDs in no time I'd be able to install BeOS and Linux, always booting into the best OS for the job at hand.

As a change of pace - I'm used to Redhat and Turbo - I tried to install Caldera OpenLinux, but eventually gave up in disgust. Then I tried to install BeOS and gave up in disgust. I've been working for most of a week in my spare time to try to install an alternative OS either directly from PCMCIA-based CD or off a hard disk partition built by copying files off that CD under Windows, and have thus far been entirely unsuccessful. We are so far away from being plug-and-play on new hardware at this point that it's just ridiculous.

I'm sure I'll eventually manage to install some form of Linux - I'm about to try a net install of RedHat - but most people wouldn't bother. If we end up with an OS that only runs on last year's hardware, we've failed.

--
I play Nerd-Folk!

Re:ITS THE STUPID MANAGERS by otis+wildflower · 1999-11-06 10:37 · Score: 1

Please somebody create webservers and SOME tools to stem the tide of these webmaster morons moving to M$ products, please?!?!?

I hate to say it, but if someone actually goes and does the work to do this in order to attract M$ moron dollars,

It'll have to run on NT because they can't be bothered to learn Unix or find people that are useful in Unix
If it's GPL or licensed under any other OSS-compliant license, it'll be considered 'fringe' software that can't be trusted
If it's commercial software, then it's competing against M$ on M$' terms. Game over.

Until we *ix sheepdogs can drive off the shiny, crafty, devious M$ sheepdogs, they'll still be herding those sheep.. Or, perhaps, we just need to continue honing, crafting, putting OSS in when people aren't looking, and maybe it'll hit them like a blinding flash: we're using OSS and we haven't gone out of business yet!

Keep bringing it up, and keep fighting the fight (and it is a fight, a rather lonely one in most booby-hat^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcompanies)..

And please, document your Perl code, because when these morons finally have sent you over the loop, and you leave to go startup a CoolCompany.com (TM), I may well have to go and figure out what the hell you meant when you built that damn list of hash references pointing to hashes of list references...

;)
Your Working Boy,

Business to business clients? by Empty+Sands · 1999-11-06 10:55 · Score: 1

Surely the war for the home client is hard going because of the very nature of microsoft's hold on the market. ie is very much more stable and faster than netscape on win32. Is this surprising given the hold ms have on hidden interfaces and various things like that.

Certainly like TV the media transmission market is vital business. However we must consider the business to business market. Free from the need for fancy plugins and client side code, the new internet technology battle ground is probably in the likes of XML and server side technology. HTTP, SMTP, or whatever the business transactions that will be carried aren't interesting in the new fancy http protocols.

Stable scable servers will be the byword there.

Re:That's what Java is FOR, DAMMIT! by Captain+Teflon · 1999-11-06 13:00 · Score: 1

Wrong.

Java's purpose was to allow Scott McNealy to turn Sun into Microsoft. He failed (opinions vary as to whether this is a good or bad thing).

Personally, every time I've started a project where Java looked like a contender, I've run into some hole in the object model, like the lack of a select() or equivalent for non-blocking I/O in sockets, or the COM/CORBA DMZ. I've usually ended up using either Delphi on Win9x or Perl in one of the Unices. I'd use Perl on windows more if it supported threads or fork(), but that hasn't happened yet (though fork() is meant to be on the way).

If Java's the only thing that can save my ass (what exactly do I need saving from again? I might dislike MS, but I hate zealots of any kind) then IMHO I might as well eat a bullet now and get the whole thing over with, because Java don't cut it.

Perl - now THERE's a platform independent language. Closer than Java, anyway.

I too hate the platform incompatibility of plugins, but really I hate the IDEA of plugins and applets even more. The web just wasn't designed for all this whizzbang crap.

My 0.02

--
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

Linux, the Lowest Common Denominator? Maybe. by persist1 · 1999-11-06 15:32 · Score: 1

I've been doing site UI and content for four years (more frenetically some times than others) and I've yet to develop on IIS (which in my market is a MEGA-liability), and when asked I recommend Linux/Apache (with the caveat that it can be hard to find an admin around here w/o paying absurd $$$ for the benefits). I'm actually kind of proud of that, most days.

I despize Windoze. But I use it because the hassle's bearable: "What, me worry when I all I have to do is reboot?" I hand-code my page source and for the time being, that's good enough for me. I'll have to delve into systems stuff soon enough, which means eating my advice (and that is why I'm finally putting /. on my daily must-visit list).

What makes my experience relevant? The fact that computers are TOOLS. We need reliable tools (if you have the resources, you'll buy a Mag-Lite over a dinky Chinese flashlight any day, right?) but we are reaching the point where discretion is the better part of valor. I don't need setup wizards, but I DO need setup procedures that are AT LEAST as easy as editing CONFIG.SYS - and that puts me in the minority amongst non-hackers. Most want simply to use their friggin' tools.

Would you prefer to buy a flashlight that you had to assemble from parts, load with an esoteric type of battery, that would burn out its bulb if you didn't turn it off before changing the batteries?

If your answer to that question was "yes" then I stand in awe of your masochism.

...Yet many of us (myself included) think nothing of exhibiting comparable masochism in regard to our servers and stations.

If on the other hand we want open-source software to succeed, we have to (ugh) follow the Web designer's mantra: "This site is being used by USERS." Not designers, not programmers, not MENSA members, not tinkerers by vocation, but USERS.

I can't support slavery to the rapid product cycle (which in my opinion, is ultimately a horrible folly)... but there definitely needs to be a reality check. A Geologically Stable Operating System (or Web Browser) is a noble goal, but it ain't worth a damn until it achieves some transparency. That will ultimately require compromises.

...So find a proactive way to make that compromise, instead of pulling some sort of apocalyptic attitude. The means to the end may be significant, but there has to be a genuine END for that statement to be valid. --BMH

--
...When in doubt, think for yourself.

Even if ... by Willennium · 1999-11-06 17:15 · Score: 1

I have just one question:

If Microsoft released IE for Linux (I know how big the chance of that is, so no need to tell me) would any of you Microsoft-hating Linux-lovers use it? EVEN THOUGH it kicks Netscapes ass in every way imaginable?

Some people seem to think that everything Microsoft does is evil, and that IE has to suck just 'coz it's from Microsoft.
You say "WE will lose the war" .. who the hell are "we"? If we are the public, the consumers, then we have won, and would have won no no matter who had made the best browser, NS och MS. If "we" are a bunch of Linux-loving lamers who honestly believe that Microsoft is an evil empire, then we have lost.

I won, because I'm benefiting from the results of that browser war: I'm using IE5. How about you guys? If you could use IE5 on your Linux machine, would you?

Methods of defense and attack by celer · 1999-11-06 21:08 · Score: 1

There are other angles from which we can attack this. We compose a significant number of people who are locked out of sites due to proprietary MS standards. The question is how can we attack this?

1.) Create a site cataloging all linux unfriendly sites

2.) Email the webmasters, and the higher-ups of those sites notifying them that they have excluded a significant number of viewers. And point them to the site listed in 1.

3.) Continue working on Mozilla

4.) "Embrace and Extend" some webstandards of our own.

5.) Continue to browse the web using linux, never giving into Bill's monopoly.

ICQ anyone? by Flippo · 1999-11-07 03:47 · Score: 1

friends of mine are dumping icq for msn messenger even though messenger has waaaay less features... etc

kinda like the beginnings of ie all over again...

icq vs. messenger = netscape vs. ie ?

instant messenger incompatibility might put another stranglehold on desktop-web-linux...

an even tougher one than ie-proprietary functions...

Re:Ouch! by Firefalcon · 1999-11-07 17:31 · Score: 1

> Besides which, it is fairly easy for a mojority
> player to add non-compatible options

But the advantage of Open Source is that someone can write a 'fix' within hours of the new non-compatible release...

Slightly off subject, but because of regular changes, shouldn't Mozilla check for new versions and offer to update itself (I haven't used it though, so maybe it does?)

Re:Ouch! by Firefalcon · 1999-11-07 18:33 · Score: 1

My site is not IE compatible because of Layers. Not because I meant it to be, but because IE5 does not support them (at least with the syntax I've used).

Having used Netscape which, while previously did add non-standard HTML extensions, did usually impliement the full standards as well, I had not been aware that most Win98 users (or people who have signed up with one of the UK Free ISP's) would see my page in a somewhat screwed up manner. As a result of this I am rewriting it to provide it in tables for non layer browsers.

I think what the article really articulates by bilgihaj · 1999-11-08 23:31 · Score: 1

is a need for a fresh perspective . . . i don't think that constantly referring to it as a war does anyone on any platform any good. Showing that an average user - not like most of us - want to access everything "their friends access". By constantly having a belligerent "us v. them" attitude it turns many "average" users off. There needs to be a bit of a reach out and educate effort, not an elitist isolationism. james

Apologies... by Spyffe · 1999-11-09 07:04 · Score: 1

Sorry. The "integration" bit in the subject had no relation to anything in the post. If that offended you, be assured that's not what I meant.

--
Sigmentation fault - core dumped

Freer than free by rick_campbell · 1999-11-12 18:43 · Score: 1

Kaz Kylheku writes:

They want everyone to follow the standard, yet they purvey reference implementations that can be molded into whatever proprietary shape that the Microsofts or Netscapes of this world care to dream up. It comes to reason that a reference implementation of a standard should have a license that promotes compliance and prevents it from being used as a basis for proprietary extensions.

The fact that GCC is a truly hot compiler has certainly not forced C/C++ compiler vendors to adopt the open source model. Rather, they've gone off and done their own independent implementations.

On the other hand, the CMU Common Lisp project placed their code in the Public Domain. The result was that Lisp vendors moved quickly toward the emerging X3J13 standard. Far from hurting CMU Common Lisp, the fact that Lucid, Franz, and others were able to pick up truly free code without facing the restrictions of the GPL, helped to quickly solidify the standard on which it was based. Today, as the only real survivor, CMUCL continues to benefit from the popularity of Lisp development during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

While the restrictions of the GPL are intended to promote freedom, they are, in fact, restrictions on what you are allowed to do. Even restricting discussion to the Free Speech sense of Free Software, if GPL is free, BSD and PD are freer than free -- fewer restrictions on your freedom to do what you wish with the software.

If you believe that Free Software and Open Source are superior models, you have no need to fear the propietary model. The fact that some of the people who advance the ideas that you wish to promote through Free Software development are motivated by hopes of financial gain in no way detracts from your goals. It might even help to advance them.

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The Battle That Could Lose Us The War

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