Point One, yes I believe that Real write shitty software.
Point Two, false, Users that see that Office 97 doesn't work on XP will retain their OS, and not upgrade. Backward compatability is something MS put on *very* high regard.
You *can* use Office97 on XP, you can use software that was written to Win3.11 on XP!!!
Can you point me to a couple of cases where MS changed their API to break competition? (Documentation, please).
DR-DOS doesn't apply, that wasn't about the API. And it was in Win3.X beta, IIRC.
Sorry, that is not a good exuse.
I've *games* that start faster than Mozilla.
I didn't check to look what it does, but it is *slow*.
Word & VC open in less than 2 seconds, MSDN & OE in less than 1.
Those are, you would agree, not loaded with the OS.
Mozilla takes a measurable time to load itself.
I've 640MB of ram & 1.2Ghz, and I sit and wait for Mozilla to load.
It's much better than NS 6, when I'd to go for a cup of coffee for it to load.
What Mozilla *should* do is to load the browser *fast*, Gaelon style, and only *then* load the rest, when the user is already surfing, it can load the rest, trasperantly for the user.
That NS had let NS4.x to reach an unrecoverable state is worrisome. They should've never done so.
There was a lot of maturity in this code, they should've sat on that and clean it up.
You just can't do it efficently.
And it is way too complex a task to do so just out of spite (hurting just NS/Mozilla).
And it's a big investment for nothing.
Mozilla's creatore would find a workaround.
And MS *knows* it, so there is no point in investing money in research for futile purpose just to spite.
About 3, did you *ever* wrote a line of code?
Do you know what an API is?
You *can't* change the Win32 API so it would break only Netscape or Mozilla, that is impossible, period.
Changing the Win32 API in any way is *not done*, period!
That is why you got a lot of FunctionNameEx in the API, because changing an API in the *most minor* way will break *ton of applications*.
Including *MS's* ones.
I disagree, IE5 can keep going over an hour without crashing.
Mozilla 0.9 on Win2K can't.
I've filed a couple of bug reports on this one.
I've exactly two bug reports about IE5, non of them is very serious (sometimes when you click on a file to download, it will close the window that you started the download from and open a download window. And... can't remember the other one:- )
Mozilla certainly *tries* to do everything that IE5 does, how successfully it does it is a matter that we can debate on for a long tine.
Netscape didn't do anything drastic with its browser for a long time.
IE5 is very standard support, IE6 more so.
IE *is* portable. It run on Windows, Mac & Unix (albiet badly, as far as I've heard).
IE is modular too, it does it on COM (Mozilla use XPCOM, btw, that does the same thing), AFAIU.
You can use IE as a renderring engine for your browser as well.
And doesn't IE run on CE devices?
About the task bar, you can fix that by logging off & on again.
Basically, the shell crash, so it updated itself, but it lose the information that it had.
Ah, here we cut to the chase, MS didn't abandon its users for 3 years, that is the difference.
And they didn't try to create a IE5 level product (which Mozilla isn't, btw) from scratch.
They had a good product in hand in IE4 days. And they kept making it better.
Netscape, OTOH, scrapped their old code base and *didn't do anything significant* for 3 whole years.
How is Mozilla more of a techincal accoplishment than IE6, btw?
The question is how can Mozilla compare to IE.
It's has a *slow* startup time, I've a 1.2Ghz and it takes over five seconds to start.
It's about as fast as IE when renderring & surfing, and just as good in giving "user experiance" whatever *that* is.
But Mozilla is not stable, period.
There is a lot of code there, but Mozilla isn't even at 1.0 release, and it's trying to be a be-all-end-all browser (not to mention other things).
I use IE6 beta, and it *very* rarely crash (application encounter an error, and wipe itself).
I don't have any crashes with IE5.5, though.
Mozilla, however, is crashable within few minutes from the moment I start browsing.
Most often, it's memory access error. And it's several other bugs that can bite a user.
Netscape made a *big* mistake when it decided to drop their old code base and start from scratch.
What they *should've* done is to concentrate their effort in cleaning the old code.
Netscape might have been an utter mess by the time it reached version four, but it was a mess that you can work with.
It has thousands of tweaks that made it possible to work with the quircks of every server that exist in the wild.
It was *mature* code.
Naturally, the Java fiasco didn't really help, but there is tone of code in NS that should've been salvaged.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you've some URL for that?
It sound like Lotus & SP6 problem.
No, Office could always read file formats of the old version.
It's forward compatibility that you are thinking about here.
Point One, yes I believe that Real write shitty software.
Point Two, false, Users that see that Office 97 doesn't work on XP will retain their OS, and not upgrade. Backward compatability is something MS put on *very* high regard.
You *can* use Office97 on XP, you can use software that was written to Win3.11 on XP!!!
Can you point me to a couple of cases where MS changed their API to break competition? (Documentation, please).
DR-DOS doesn't apply, that wasn't about the API. And it was in Win3.X beta, IIRC.
BTW, here is a good article about NS 4 & NS' choice to start from scratch.
r $4 7
http://joel.editthispage.com/stories/storyReade
Sorry, that is not a good exuse.
I've *games* that start faster than Mozilla.
I didn't check to look what it does, but it is *slow*.
Word & VC open in less than 2 seconds, MSDN & OE in less than 1.
Those are, you would agree, not loaded with the OS.
Mozilla takes a measurable time to load itself.
I've 640MB of ram & 1.2Ghz, and I sit and wait for Mozilla to load.
It's much better than NS 6, when I'd to go for a cup of coffee for it to load.
What Mozilla *should* do is to load the browser *fast*, Gaelon style, and only *then* load the rest, when the user is already surfing, it can load the rest, trasperantly for the user.
That NS had let NS4.x to reach an unrecoverable state is worrisome. They should've never done so.
There was a lot of maturity in this code, they should've sat on that and clean it up.
Yes, unless they do a system spesific calls (using Unicode would trap you to NT, making direct hardware calls to 9x, etc.).
A> It wouldn't be efficent.
B> It would crash IE if you surf to mozilla.org, OE when you write an email about mozilla, etc.
There just isn't a way to do this without hurting themself as well.
Well, they didn't wait to have a 90% market share.
They did it when they have less than 50% market share.
Okay, sorry for the outburst.
You just can't do it efficently.
And it is way too complex a task to do so just out of spite (hurting just NS/Mozilla).
And it's a big investment for nothing.
Mozilla's creatore would find a workaround.
And MS *knows* it, so there is no point in investing money in research for futile purpose just to spite.
IIRC, there was a time when both NS & MS offered licenses, MS' license was much cheaper.
No, but run on Solaris & Hp-UX
Beside a really cool UI and the stability of NT.
Users don't care about the latter, but they sure do care about the former.
About 3, did you *ever* wrote a line of code?
Do you know what an API is?
You *can't* change the Win32 API so it would break only Netscape or Mozilla, that is impossible, period.
Changing the Win32 API in any way is *not done*, period!
That is why you got a lot of FunctionNameEx in the API, because changing an API in the *most minor* way will break *ton of applications*.
Including *MS's* ones.
Get a grip in reality, please.
Beside, both NS6 & Mozilla crash a lot as it is.
You mean like:
Marquee, document.all, vbscript?
To be fair, vbscript license cost *way* less than JavaScript license.
What XP means, in Mozilla's terminology?
Well?
Okay, I'll tell you.
Cross - Platform.
I disagree, IE5 can keep going over an hour without crashing.
:- )
Mozilla 0.9 on Win2K can't.
I've filed a couple of bug reports on this one.
I've exactly two bug reports about IE5, non of them is very serious (sometimes when you click on a file to download, it will close the window that you started the download from and open a download window. And... can't remember the other one
Mozilla certainly *tries* to do everything that IE5 does, how successfully it does it is a matter that we can debate on for a long tine.
Netscape didn't do anything drastic with its browser for a long time.
IE5 is very standard support, IE6 more so.
IE *is* portable. It run on Windows, Mac & Unix (albiet badly, as far as I've heard).
IE is modular too, it does it on COM (Mozilla use XPCOM, btw, that does the same thing), AFAIU.
You can use IE as a renderring engine for your browser as well.
And doesn't IE run on CE devices?
What does Mozilla does that IE can't do?
You got it wrong.
AOL [ we contron the infromation resources]
MS [ we control the software ]
Intel [ we control the hardware ]
> But the nightly builds for Mozilla are are so good!
We keep hearing this for what, two years?
Let me know when they are *good enough*.
Ms doesn't have unlimited funds, they have pretty big reserves in cash, and more in non-liquid essests, but they certainly don't have unlimited funds.
More importantly, they won't spend unlimited money on lost causes. There is a difference between being a lossleader and being stupid.
Beside, AOL isn't your average innocent little company, you know.
I'ved never had seen this behaviour.
About the task bar, you can fix that by logging off & on again.
Basically, the shell crash, so it updated itself, but it lose the information that it had.
Ah, here we cut to the chase, MS didn't abandon its users for 3 years, that is the difference.
And they didn't try to create a IE5 level product (which Mozilla isn't, btw) from scratch.
They had a good product in hand in IE4 days. And they kept making it better.
Netscape, OTOH, scrapped their old code base and *didn't do anything significant* for 3 whole years.
How is Mozilla more of a techincal accoplishment than IE6, btw?
IE's market share is close to > 86%
However, if AOL moves 30 Million customers to Mozilla, that *instantly* wipe out the MS-only extentions in web sites.
We would get back to the good old days of the browsers wars.
The question is how can Mozilla compare to IE.
It's has a *slow* startup time, I've a 1.2Ghz and it takes over five seconds to start.
It's about as fast as IE when renderring & surfing, and just as good in giving "user experiance" whatever *that* is.
But Mozilla is not stable, period.
There is a lot of code there, but Mozilla isn't even at 1.0 release, and it's trying to be a be-all-end-all browser (not to mention other things).
I use IE6 beta, and it *very* rarely crash (application encounter an error, and wipe itself).
I don't have any crashes with IE5.5, though.
Mozilla, however, is crashable within few minutes from the moment I start browsing.
Most often, it's memory access error. And it's several other bugs that can bite a user.
Netscape made a *big* mistake when it decided to drop their old code base and start from scratch.
What they *should've* done is to concentrate their effort in cleaning the old code.
Netscape might have been an utter mess by the time it reached version four, but it was a mess that you can work with.
It has thousands of tweaks that made it possible to work with the quircks of every server that exist in the wild.
It was *mature* code.
Naturally, the Java fiasco didn't really help, but there is tone of code in NS that should've been salvaged.
FWIW, MS has signed a deal with QWest.
The King Is Dead (IE) all hail to the New King (Mozilla).
Who wanna guess how much IE's market share will plummet?