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Communicator Is Losing The War.....
Carnage4Life writes "Here's a ZDNet article that backs up the post by Dave Whitinger..it seems corporate IT types are tired of waiting for Navigator to catch up and may begin to abandon it... Wonder where that leaves Linux users if websites start tending to be IE enabled to perform useful tasks."
Now the big issue is, why? Plainly put, crappy products. Their browser is a dog, even worse than IE.
Their servers are woefully inadequate compared to the freely-available Apache, which also has captured the market for server extensions.
As much as Microsoft damaged them with questionable practices, there is no doubt Netscape helped dig their own grave.
Netscape, pretty much for the entire 4.x release
/.'s homepage) wouldn't cause browser
process, appears to be unable to release a
solid, stable browser that behaves consistently
across different color depths, and doesn't crash
regardless of what java and javascript do.
By version 4.7, you would think that they'd
figure out how to make Java work consistently,
regardless of how many times NS has crashed
during that X session. By verison 4.7, you would
think that random pieces of javascript (i.e.
what's on
crashes under some circumstances but not others.
Finally, you would think that bugs that have
been reported since 4.05 and earlier would
actually be fixed in 4.7, instead of them
just adding new features.
Right now, in terms of stability, netscape
is crap. Right now, if IE was available for
FreeBSD (either native of a Linux version),
I would probably be running it, because IE
on NT sure is a hell of a lot more stable
than Netscape on anything. I don't think IE
has better features. I don't think it has a
better interface. The only reason I care about
IE is that it has less bugs.
Right now I'd also be very very happy to be able
to pay $35 for a copy of Opera for FreeBSD.
It's small, fast, and STABLE! Yes, the most
important part of that is STABLE. Besides being
annoying, flaky software isn't user friendly.
ERROR: Null
In my oppinion what browsers need is not *more* functionality loaded at start up, but less.
Let me elaborate this statement.
First off, as we all know there is a formula (at the moment I don't recall it's name) stating that for each ammount of code, there are X number of faults (bugs) in the code. As the code increases, so does the bugs.
So.. In order to minimize the bugs there are two solutions: A) Review and beta test the apps more before release, and B) use less code.
The easiest to do would be option B, while I personally think a combination of A and B would be the best.
The solution the browser makers could apply would be to start the software without and 'plug-ins', java support and other 'fancy'(cloggy) features. Just plain HTML (and perhaps image support).
This would enable the browser to start much quicker than todays'.
If the user would like to have support for additional features, then they would load dynamically (and by the user's choice in the options section, reside in memmory until app. closure for ex.).
Tip for web page software creators.
Any provider of HTML creation software should provide information that says something like: "remember, if you create a page with 'this' or 'that' feature requirement, which is not specified in the W3 standard of HTML, then you will risk loosing business, since many potential customers might not be able to access your pages or might not accept the extra load time".
Myself I remember the days when Gopher was popular, and when Mosaic arrived (and the first Netscape). These tools were great. Unfortunately they aren't of much use today since many sites will not work properly on them. (some because of newer HTML standard and most because of unneccecary extra 'enhancements' which you must have support for).
By that time it was even quicker viewing a rendom web page by using a 14Kbit modem than today's random page with MS or NS browsers and a V.90 modem.
To conclude this post (which became longer than expected), I'd just like to say: Please be aware of the *magic* second, which is a rule all developers should aim to meet (or come close to).
I just thought I'd try to sum up the general feelings of users as far as Netscape goes. I work tech support for an ISP and I think this also adresses a lot of issues that regular users run into:
1) Support the damn standards.
I want to build compliant style sheets and tables and actually have them look decent in both browsers. I don't want some wacky bug screwing with table rendering or mucking about with javascript. I want JavaScript to work without specifying which browser I'm taking into account and writing an individual subroutine for each one.
2) Let me download just the browser again.
Dear Netscape Messenger development team;
Messenger sucks.
As someone who works in tech support, I'm sick of explaining to people why there are user interface issues that crop up, why some things are displayed inline and others aren't. I honestly would rather use a 3rd party mail program than that bloated POS. On a wintel platform, follow Microsoft's lead and make the mail and new separate programs, it'll make everyone happier.
Also, nobody uses Collabra, Composer or any of the other crap that you shovel into every release. There are other programs which do the job much better. This goes for AOL IMmer too, I have ICQ thank you very much. If I want AOL IMmer, I know where to get it. A bit of an idea, take all the coders working on that crap and have them work on the main browser, finding bugs and whatnot.
A functional web browser that is under a 10 meg download wouldn't be bad.
3) Tone down the user interface.
Nobody needs a goddamned shop button. I found that I use a grand total of 4 buttons on my browser:
back, forward, stop, and refresh.
That is all, anything else is mostly useless. Nobody uses the Cool sites crap, or anything else for that matter. More features that take up room. People will invariably use the extra crap for stuff it wasn't intended to be used for, breaking the browser, leading to a call to tech support.
4) Keep bookmarks html.
This is the one thing that Navigator has done right. If I want to move bookmarks from one version to another, or one computer to another I just need to copy a file, unlike IE where I have to copy a whole directory.
5) Load time counts.
Yes, the new layout engine is fast, but that doesn't mean anything if the damn program takes 30 seconds to load. The computers that we use at work are pII-266's with 64 megs of RAM, and IE5 loads in 2 seconds, Navigator takes about 30 seconds to load. You can make all the excuses you want about IE5 being part of the OS and all that. That is beside the point, if IE can do it, so can Navigator, figure out a way. Nobody notices if a web page loads in 1.4 seconds in one browser and 1.7 in another, If the interface feels slow and clunky, that is enough to turn me off.
6) Make the interface decent.
See how smooth IE is, attempt to make Navigator look similar. Navigator is too industrial looking for most peoples tastes. This may be harder because M$ has hidden a lot of the API that IE uses (it is undocumented). Netscape can at least try to get Navigator to look close. This is a minor point, but it counts.
7) A bit controversial, but if IE has bugs, occasionally try to make the page look decent anyway.
People write bad html, tested in only IE. IE renders it the way they want it to render and that is enough. I'm not supporting bad HTML, but it is not the browser's job to become style police. There are a lot of bugs out there and a lot of sites taking advantage of those bugs. Navigator is now in a position of playing catch up. Emma in Nebraska doesn't care about HTML correctness, she cares about being able to read webpages, regardless of the platform they were designed on. Keep standards compliance, but don't be totally rigid on it. In situations where the standard is not clear, follow Microsoft's implementation of it.
I was a faithful Navigator user up until version 4. I continued to use Navigator for a while after it was released, but fewer and fewer sites looked correct and I had to switch to IE. I go over to the people working in web adesign where I work and they are constantly cussing out Navigator.
Anyone have anything else to add?
Andrew (patiently awaitng a version of Navigator that doesn't suck dead kittens through straws.)
A lot of people have a lot of hope invested in communicator. However, Netscape has consistently put effort into adding features, when most of us would just be happy to see it run all day without crashing.
I think we would all put up with a few less features, if the features that we had worked reliably. I suspect that it's not just geeks who feel this way.
Whatever happened to software quality? In order to beat Microsoft, Netscape appears to be playing the same dangerous game of releasing unreliable software. Dangerous for Netscape, because nobody plays this game better than MSFT.
So I know the mozilla people are reading this: Mike, get with it, fix some more bugs. Get people off of features and onto stability.
There are only 2 real reasons why you'd use Netscape on a mac or win platform.
1. I'm so anti-MS I'd rather use an abacus!
2. Security.
Not that Netscape is bulletproof, but look at IE's trackrecord in the past few months. Something like a dozen exploits, most of which do a lot more than just crash your system. So I patiently wait for 5.0 because I don't need the headache of some exploit trashing my system and I don't want to support a company so lax on security.
Heh, I got a kick out of the guy who lists one of IE's strong points as frequent security patches. If these are the 'experts' I'm glad I disagree.
Ahhhh... Remember the days when a Web Browser was used for browsing the web rather than handling every aspect of the internet experience? If I recall, the stability of Netscape started seriously slipping when it started doing mail/news/development. Well, the first couple of iterations of Java and JavaScript were a little flakey, but hey, you'd expect that from new features.
I've found that Navigator Standalone runs much more stably on my Mac than any version of IE. The only thing I can see in IE that I like more than Navigator is dynamic rendering of pages (man, I HATE waiting for these nested comments wrapped in one huge table to load on /.) - not really that much though...
If only Netscape(AOL) would focus on making Web Browsers rather than slapping a shoddy email client (I already have one that works well), a crummy newsreader (got one of those too, thanks) and a composer (that's what text editors are for - ok, I'm a purist ;) into the works. All it seems to accomplish is increase the complexity of the project and suck valuable resources away from the real goal of a Web Browser: Browsing the web!
Culture is more than commerce
AOL bought Netscape for the Netcenter portal. They didn't want the server business, and they didn't want the client. There were legal and tax reasons why Netscape couldn't be easily broken up and sold off for parts, or I'm pretty sure that's what would have happened. This whole ``Netscape/Sun Alliance'' thing is AOL's way of selling-but-not-really-selling that side of the business to Sun.
If there is ever an end-user version of Mozilla, and it's highly compatible with MSIE, AOL may yet do this (as a target of opportunity.) That would be a very good thing for the web, and for Linux. But I seriously doubt it's keeping anyone in AOL management up at night; they're perfectly happy using MSIE, and they won't stop until something better comes along. And if nothing ever does, it won't matter to them.
Don't count on AOL to save the day.
Mozilla was Microsoft's master stroke. Not only has it failed to deliver a viable competitor to Netscape, it has also kept any other open source browser project from gaining critical mass.
Despite all those little alarms going off in my head to ignore this, it's sadly happening, and in my immediate world. Upon arriving back at school this year, I found they finally got the T1 connection up, and the machines have - Internet Explorer 5. I assist in the computer labs and was going to protest this decision, then it occured to me - why bother.
... propiterary API's that aren't being shared or whatnot), but Netscape sucks big time on the machines. Crashes left and right, renders like a drunk slug, and takes way too long to load. Meanwhile IE 5 somehow manages to perform efficently on the machines.
/etc/junkbuster/cookiefile, I simply add the site to the "Trusted Sites" zone. Nice. I also spend the time to marvel at the faster more intelligent rendering engine IE seems to have, the nice smooth scrolling, and all the other little things.
The machines are 486/133's (how sad I know), and they simply don't cut the mustard when it comes to using Netscape. I don't know why (ok I _probably_ know why
I then arrived back at the technical school I goto, to the newly arrived Pentium III's. How odd, we had Netscape last year, suddenly IE's our browser this year. I installed Netscape for a project about a month later and boy, was I surprised. There I was on a state of the art new spiffy Gateway machine, and Netscape's performance was still horrid. IE 5 wins again.
I am (was?) a devout Netscape user. IE had never seen the light of day on my machine. I've used Netscape from version 2.02 to 4.61. My computer dual boots Windows 98 (I just can't kick the games, doh!) and Linux. While in Windows after playing a game, I was using a webpage that required a browser with some of the new specs (HTTP 1.1 or whatnot, I forget exactly.) "Netscape 4.61 or Internet Explorer 4 required". Well, I only have Netscape 4.07 in Windows installed because I don't really use the internet in there. Let's see, I obviously need one of these browsers. I have a 56K modem, do I wait an hour and a half to download Netscape 4.7, or hm, is that "Includes Internet Explorer" I see on that CD there?
I install IE 5. After what seemed about 5 reboots, and about 20 minutes later I'm in Windows on the internet. Boy, this thing just FEELS better then Netscape. I use Internet Junkbuster in Linux for cookie filtering (call me paranoid?), and misc other utilites to customize my browsing. Well I'll be damned, Internet Explorers got all these nice customized "Security Settings" per website you can use. No longer do I have to open up my
Fast forward, two weeks later. Sitting in Linux I am, curious on the status of Mozilla. I download Mozilla M10. An excellent work so far, and I look forward to using the final version. The only problem here? IE 5, with what seems to me has almost all the features of Mozilla I'm looking for is out now. Mozilla M20, Gecko, Netscape 5 - whatever it may be called, doesn't look like it's coming anytime soon. While I can certainly wait a few months, my schools obviously can't. And that means IT departments everywhere probably won't. With Linux comes the need for a browser that can perform well. While we all love lynx, it just won't work in corporate settings. Opera looks promising, but it's not here yet, and everyones become too jaded and used to a "Free" browser anyways.
This is not intended as flamebait or whatnot, I'm simply telling the tragic story of how myself, a Linux geek, Netscape loving guy, has unwillingly come to accept IE.