Netscape 6 Fails To Support Web Standards 721
Steve Chapel writes: "JavaScript: The Definitive Guide author David Flanagan has posted
an article
and a petition requesting that the final release of the
Netscape 6 browser
based on the
Mozilla open-source project
be delayed until it fixes the
problems
with support for current Web standards." It seems clear to me that Netscape cares a lot more about shopping tabs and similar deadwood - things that bring immediate profit to the Netscape Corporation but absolutely no value to the user - than they do about putting out a decent browser. Personally, I'd recommend beta-testing IE 6, since IE not only has won the browser wars, it's clearly a better browser - and will remain so.
My post to oreilly (Score:2)
For everyone who has ever been involved in the software industry these things should not come as a surprize.
When developing software there, every time a releasedate is aproaching two parallel development paths are followed:
1. Concetrating on ongoing development toward the release after this one.
2. Concentrating on testing, stabilizing and polishing the release version.
Path 1. is being persued by the mozilla organisation and is being conducted in public (more on that later)
Path 2. is being persued by AOL/Netscape
The reason this happens is when path 2 is finished path 1 has progressed and has aquired new features, found and fixed flaws that were not apparent when path 2 started.
This does not mean these things will not be available to people using the release version, allthough it does mean it will be in a next release. The reality is when you want to release a version the line for that release has to be drawn somewhere and in real life this line has to be drawn somewhere before perfection.
I would be very much surprised if this would not prove to be the case in many other industries. I for one would not like to wait until has a car in the showroom that according to their engineers is the best possible car they can produce. And the minute they do I take pity on any of their customers choosing to buy the next model.
The only reason why netscape is being given so much critisism I can think of at this point is because the efforts leading to their next release is out in the open. This is something some people are not used to and as a result have trouble putting into perspective.
So there; the way I see it this is for the most part a complaint about software development out in the open.
As for the points in your petition:
1. Renaming Navigator 6.0 to beta and incorporate patches
This will only lead to the same discussion come the time for the new release date. See above, again there will be new patches and features in the development branch, someone will browse bugzilla and a website will run a story like this.
NS 6.0 scores better than the competition on standards compliance tests, this way you deprive us of having the most standards compliant browser at this time shipping to end users.
2. Refocus on standards compliance.
Your gripe with Netscape cannot possibly be about standards compliance. They are about to ship the most standards compliant browser they have ever put out. Arguably even the best in this field available today.
3. Postpone final release until it is more "robustly standards compliant"
Yo are reiterating point 1. Anyone interested see point 1.
That's it for me, I don't normaly take the time to post in forums, but I feel this needed to be said.
Geeze, give em some credit (Score:2)
Re:Netscape 6 doesn't support things Netscape 4.7 (Score:2)
Mozilla is W3C-standards compatible, while nearly all webpages out there aren't. Most webpages are only NN and IE compatible. But who is to blame here? The programmers of a fully standards compatible browser, or all these silly web "designers" out there who don't follow standards? Yes, to support NN + IE in it currents version they had to tweak the standard, but it is still possible to write DHTML code which will work in all three browsers.
It seems that Netscape is pushing W3C standards the hard way by simply refusing to accept old shit pages.
So you are simply wrong. IE4 has _not_ better support for CSS standards than NN6. It has worse. NN 4.7 and IE * are the same shit when it comes to standards compliance.
So if you want to stay compatible you have to code in three standards: NN 4.7, IE plus the ultimate W3C-compliant. Hopefully Microsoft will turn to the W3C-track too.
Re:Someone had to say it (Score:2)
- Netscape - fast, sucks for resizing, basically a dead product
- Mozilla - slow and bloated (though beta), lots of bells, whistles, and extra shit. Nice for resizing and rendering (IMHO) but still slow. Currently this and mozilla are the only ways that you can use verisign Certs (that I know of) in internet mail
- Galeon (galeon.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net]) based on the mozilla browser so it renders nicely, missing some important features at the moment (cookies, ssl), but under heavy development
- Opera - small, fast light. Rendering not as good as mozilla (IMO) but more feature complete than galeon, but it's not free IIRC, so people are going to rebel against this I think
- Konquerer - fast, nice, requires KDE libs but can run nicely on a helix gnome system. No support for stylesheets from what I've seen, but a very nice file browser. Stability issues and not complete html spec compliance are problems though.
- Lynx - for the purists only
:)
- Linx - for the new purist, a text based web browser that renders tables and forms wonderfully, but it still lacks gfx and plugins and everything that make this wonderful "web" the way it is today
:)
So have I missed any? I probably have. My point is that netscape and mozilla may suck the bone right now, but they are still the best that we poor linux users have. I agree, IE is a good browser (I don't think it would be as fast as it appears to be if it weren't loaded with the OS, and because of that OS integration it has some problems that I've had as well as that whole "crash your browser crash your OS" thing, but these are relatively small issues.Personally I use mozilla for my mail and browsing, galeon for my browsing when I'm not going to slashdot or some cookied site, and that's about it. When in windows (seldom) I either use mozilla nightlys or ie (but I feel dirty when I do it).
Re:What is /. coming to? (Score:2)
Re:Two platforms ? (Score:2)
Re:From a Web Developers point of view (Score:2)
Positioning anything 'pixel' wise requires a lot of coding trickery, Table and cell backgrounds render incorrectly - the list goes on.
You want pixels? How about displaying on my PalmIII? Why Yahoo works absolutely perfectly with my PalmIIIc and Browse-it (aka Proxiweb), and a bunch of sites written "pixel-positioned" looks like a pile of dog shit? Why every gorilla with a keyboard wants to make his stupid page display like it's a freaking laminated brochure? Aren't you and your company the real source of the problem?
Re:A *REAL* Suggestion (Score:2)
I ain't budging. I don't _want_ all-singing, all-dancing websties to actively reprogram my computer for me. "Submit to the brain scan of brainitor.com!" yech.
Yes, I did mean to type websties... started out as a typo, then I fixed it, then looked at it and fixed it right back again. Guess why ;)
Re:We've been waiting for over two years... (Score:2)
The Unix answer to non-anti-aliased fonts is (and long has been) an insanely high resolution. If you aren't doing that, it's Your Own Damn Fault. You think that TrueType fonts look better? So do I, I use 'em. Or just run Lynx in text mode. That always works better.
Why the fsck is X an imperfect platform for building web browsers? It's a fscking DISPLAY PROTOCOL. It doesn't care what the app on top of it is -- indeed, it cares much less than the win32 GDI. While X allows network-based abstraction, SHM-based communications and other such stuff is also available for speed, so don't give me that kind of excuse. Anyhow, I fail to see how X the display protocol is any worse than the win32 GDI for building browsers. Please explain.
And as for Mozilla, they don't work with the constraints of X. The whole reason they're behind schedule is that they built their own platform/abstraction layer to free them from such constraints. I don't see how you get off blaming X for Mozilla's crashes, either -- or, for that matter, how a 10-year Unix guy could stand to use a graphical mail reader for five minutes.
Frankly, I get the impression that you're more the kind of person cut out to be a Windows user. If you like doing things the Windows way, Windows does that better than Unix. If you like the Unix way, nothing else compares.
Re:We've been waiting for over two years... (Score:2)
Oh, yeah. That.
What X server are you using? Text is still transmitted to the X server as use-this-font, print-this-text... it's not as if bitmaps are being sent all the way from Xlib. If you have issues with font rendering speed, it's primarily a problem with the server, not the protocol.
NEVER believe top's memory usage info! (Score:2)
Moral of the story? Never believe top. It's inaccurate as hell.
When sorting by memory usage, I have a screen full of processes reporting 134 or 135 megs of mem usage! (kdeinit, xmms)
Guess what other system tools report:
cat
Mem: 261861376 259076096 2785280 0 3002368 112926720
Swap: 263135232 0 263135232
MemTotal: 255724 kB
MemFree: 2720 kB
Yes, that's right, I have 256 M and no swap used... Yet X claims to use more than my system memory. Again, don't trust top.
It's not just X... (Score:2)
top is just plain confused...
Konqueror rocks! (Score:2)
Two complaints about Konqueror:
Its cookie filtering sometimes rejects even cookies you've told it to accept. (staples.com, www.nerfonline.net)
I haven't figured out how to get java applets to display in the page instead of a seperate windows.
Also, it fails to display the list of supported Linux USB devices (not linux-usb.org, but linked to from the site) properly. About the only page that has a problem, tho.
All in all, I love Konqueror. Sadly, there's an occasional page that requires me to go back to Netscape, but in most cases it kicks the crap out of NS. (Note, I've always hated IE, always will, its UI just plain sucks.) I have deleted all of my Netscape launchers from my desktop, tho...
BTW, one note: I'm a rabid GNOME fan, and I still have GNOME as my primary desktop env. But Konqueror is worth installing the KDE libs and everything else needed...
Re:Someone had to say it (Score:2)
You want to cry, go try IE for Mac, the closest thing to a truely standards-compliant browser. After using it for an hour you'll wonder how the same company could have put out both (except for the icon sets and registered trademarks attached).
Yep, I'll just download IE6 for Linux right here (Score:2)
Oh wait, who's paying for your servers and bandwidth? VA Linux you say? Hmm, that's odd.
Re:IE isn't on all platforms (Score:2)
Now, before you call me a Windoze luser, I use Windows2k for my browser and to play Half-life (counter-strike), linux on my Alpha as a squid web proxy and file server, Solaris on my Sparc, and OpenBSD for my NAT'ing firewall. I like to think that I'm above all this mindless nonsense of the OS flamewars.
5 years ago people on the comp.os.linux.advocacy usenet group sounded exactly the same way most people on Slashdot sound today and it's really tiring. Nerds, ESPECIALLY nerds, should except that a person likes to use different OS's that meet their specific needs. There's nothing wrong with that! To blindly advocate an OS as the end-all-to-be-all operating system is ridiculous. Linux is severely lacking in multimedia and 3D support for example. I have a hard time even justifying a reason why I would need to dual boot my Win2k box to Linux anymore. There just isn't anything there I need that I can't do just as well, if not better, under Win2k.
So, take this all with a grain of salt and I will put on my flame-retardant suit.
4.7??? (Score:2)
:)
hawk, who generally uses lynx, anyway
This is ridiculous. (Score:2)
When I don't use Mozilla, I use links (no, not lynx), a very excellent text-mode browser that supports frames and tables very very well.
m.
Loki Software, Inc.
Re:Mine uses 100 megs... (Score:2)
It's just using 25M.
m.
Loki Software, Inc.
Re:AOL is killing NS6 (Score:2)
Uhh. AOL is putting all of this "neat" stuff into Mozilla because they eventually plan on using it. Since they are paying for the coders, you can't hardly blame them for adding features that they find useful.
Somehow I imagine that things like AIM and AOL email are going to be very important to AOL users. If you don't like the Netscape preview, I would reccomend taking a look at Mozilla (it's different).
I agree, somewhat... (Score:2)
About the IE comment, though... I use IE and Netscape on a regular basis, both Mac and Windows. While IE5 beats Netscape4 on both platforms, currently Mozilla beats both of them. It's progressed to the point where it's more stable than either of the two, its standards support is higher (though IE5/Mac comes close), and -much to my surprise- it's actually fast now (if your last experience with Mozilla is the Netscape preview releases, I strongly suggest you give the current nightlies another look).
That last part is actually quite a shame; if they hadn't bothered with fluff like cross-platform skinning, they'd have a damn fast browser out by now. But, so be it. It's still the best out there, and I say they should take all the time I need to just plain get it right the first time.
----------
valid? maybe. Backed up? Not a chance (Score:2)
What exactly are you smoking? michael has not presented any evidence to support his claim that IE has "won the browser wars." Certainly there exists plenty of evidence for this claim, but michael has not presented a whit of it.
michael has not presented any evidence that "[IE] is clearly a better browser." First off, there is the familiar refrain that I can't run IE because for various reasons (among them not wanting to spend $5000 to get an unlimited-client web, mail, file, and login server) I must run Linux. Hard to argue that IE is better for me when I can't run it. Second, Mozilla and Konqueror are actually very high quality products right now. Mozilla in particular when compiled with optimizations and no debug (that is to say, do not use a precompiled nightly build) is as flighty on its feet as IE. Believe me I know: I've used IE on friends' boxes, and I use Mozilla on mine. No I'm not saying this is easy to do right now, but it will be once Mozilla hits 1.0.
Finally, michael's claim that IE "will [always] remain" better than the competition is utterly unsupported, and indeed unsupportable, by any evidence. In theory his other two claims above could have been backed by evidence if he had chosen to present it, but I don't see any conceivable line of reasoning that could prove IE will be on top forever.
Re:What is /. coming to? (Score:2)
You're not being fair here. The two projects utilizing blizzard's gtkembed widget (part of Mozilla), the galeon and skipstone browsers, have gotten plenty of support in the form of patches, translations, and testing. I don't know for sure why they didn't contribute to Mozilla. Maybe they did and nobody noticed. Maybe they didn't feel that their contribution would make a difference. The point is they were always willing.
Re:Uhhhh, michael? (Score:2)
Amazing? Back when the project started, the goal [jwz.org] was to release 5.0 in under six months. Even removing the first year working on the old code base, it's still very late. And as much as I'd like to use something not 4.7X, mozilla's unresponsive nature, slow loading time, cookie problems (in the widget), size, and unreliability still keep me from switching over full time.
Re:Uh, yeah. (Score:2)
I can't speak for any of them, of course, but there are people in every technology company (excepting perhaps Microsoft) whose love of technology is greater than their love of money.
--
I read the article, and... (Score:2)
A very good article, whose discussion here was completely ruined by being posted to Slashdot in an inflammatory way. We could have had a nice, intelligent discussion, but the words "IE not only has won the browser wars, it's clearly a better browser - and will remain so" sparked the usual flamefest. This was completely unnecessary, and terribly irresponsible.
--
ARGH. The title of that was supposed to be... (Score:2)
Re:What a week (Score:2)
Re:Selfish greedy business (Score:2)
Re:Speak For Yourself. (Score:2)
Actually, no. Our online sales have brought prices down in our store to unheard of levels. As I said, in 1985, you'd pay close to $100 for a really good saddle for your bike. You'll pay $70 for the same saddle . This is not just at my father's store--this is at all good bicycle stores. Yep, our competitors are (mostly) still around. They still have the moldy-smelling poorly-lit stores with high prices that they did back then. But why should you, as the consumer, settle for that?
Like it or not, this is what the consumers of this country are demanding. This is exactly why stores like Borders and Barnes and Noble are so popular. People were sick of going to the local record shop and getting a crappy selection and paying high prices for their purchases.
And no, my father's store didn't come on the scene like Border's with millions of dollars of investors' money. He started in a room of an old house with a few bikes, fixing tubes. It's really not about my father, though. There are thousands of good businessmen and women like him. In this day and age, the world of business is survival of the fittest.
Re:Speak For Yourself. (Score:2)
I run Win2k here on 40 Dell machines and I've never had a crash. You might look into upgrading your firmware on your Dells. We had a horrible time with buggy BIOSes on our machines (both Win2k and FreeBSD) until we upgraded BIOS revision.
YOU are wrong. (Score:2)
Your assertion that RedHat doesn't make closed-source software is entirely incorrect. CCVS is closed source. I think they also have some clustering/HA software that is closed source.
Re:Speak For Yourself. (Score:2)
I disagree. Slashdot is "news for nerds", nothing else. Yes, there are many open source advocates here but that is not what this forum is about. Open Source, however noble, is not the end-all be-all. The common (but not formally sanctioned) belief amongst the open source crowd is that big business is inherently bad. This is something that I used to believe strongly back in 94 or so but since I left college and went into the real world, I'm beginning to see that there is a place for both open source and closed source.
What is good about Windows? Well, for one, it's very easy to use when compared to *BSD and Linux. As much as I love UNIX, I'd never install it on my grandparents' computer. I'd like to say that KDE and GNOME were "there" and ready to be used by folks like my grandmother but they just aren't. And really, the windowing environment is only the beginning. If my grandmother saw the disk partitioning tools included with most UNIX OSes (even the newer versions of RedHat), she'd probably keel over. Never mind user accounts and setting up networking. It just ain't happening right now. Maybe in 5 years but not now.
These people are nasty evil people who got to the top by crushing anybody who got in their way.
I hate to say it, my friend, but that is business for you. Most successful companies got that way by edging less dominant competitors out of the markey. My father, who owns some bicycle stores, is now the largest dealer in South Texas not because he kept expanding his store (he did) but because his cuthroat prices have driven his competitors out of business. There is nothing wrong with this! It's life. Business is not fair!
Giving these people absolute control of any key technology is the same as shooting yourself in the head.
Pardon? Who said that anyone has absolute control over the browser market? Have the police knocked on your door and told you that you cannot use Netscape (or links, mosaic, etc)? If you don't like it, don't use it.
</rant>
Re:Netscape won the browser war. (Score:2)
However, as a Java programmer, I take exception to your exhaltation of Netscape and condemning of Microsoft.
The Microsoft JVM included in IE is 10x the VM of the Netscape JVM. The Netscape JVM never worked well. It was slow, buggy, and crashed Netscape more often than it worked.
The IE JVM didn't support JNI (the Sun standard for accessing native code--that is, C, C++, and the like). Other than that, it was pretty decent.
Yes, Microsoft attempted to sabotage the Java platform. But the reason the Java platform sucks inside browsers is much more Netscape's fault than Microsoft's.
Re:Netscape won the browser war. (Score:2)
Java is a wonderful language. I was a 4-year veteran of C++ when I took up Java 4 years ago. Before that, I had another 4 years professional experience with C. And before that I had 9 years unprofessional experience with Basic, Pascal, Lisp, and Assembler. I have dabbled a bit with Cobol, Fortran, and Perl during my professional career, as well. I can tell you that I am probably on the order of four times more productive in Java than the next closest language (C++) when working on anything but the smallest of projects.
I have done client side and server side Java, and have not had *any* problems porting applications between Linux, BSD, Solaris, HP/UX, Windows, and AIX since JDK1.2.2 (yes, there were some problemsm before that, especially with JDK 1.1.6 and before). The speed for client-side programming is worse than native languages. But, as my degrees and experience have taught me, Moore's Law makes my programming efficiency far more important my computer's efficiency. And bug-free coding (the goal, not the reality) is many times more important than either (Java makes bug-free coding much easier). Server side programming, when taking advantage of the object pooling available to servlets and JSPs (i.e. not writing dumb code, from which the benchmark published in slashdot a few weeks ago suffered) is actually faster than other languages besides mod_php and mod_perl, and is neck-and-neck with those.
If you're judging Java based upon the performance and functionality of the JVM in your browser, or of the JVMs that were available 2 years ago, you're selling Java short. It's a very good language.
Oh, and you can make tons of money coding in it, too. I like money.
Re:Netscape won the browser war. (Score:2)
Furthermore, object pooling for database resources, among others, is very easy in Java. This is where the benchmark posted on Slashdot a few weeks ago fell down. The benchmark allocated a new database connection each time the page was accessed. It is very difficult to avoid this with server-side technologies that allocate new space on the heap for each request (it can be done, but it is a pain in the butt), whereas it is the default mechanism when using the J2EE javax.sql package.
mod_php and mod_perl can also do object pooling. This is why they outperform JSPs in typical settings (i.e. unless mod_php and mod_perl are poorly set up).
Cold Fusion, ASP, and most other server-side technology make object pooling extremely difficult. For this reason, Microsoft changed the architecture for ASP+, and have borrowed many ideas from JSPs (just like JSPs borrowed many ideas from ASP in the first place).
Here are a few benchmarks. Realize that server-side performance depends not only on the JVM chosen (use HotSpot), but also on the servlet container (JRun and Orion outperform Tomcat, the *reference* implementation, by 3-5x)
http://www.orionserver.com/ (click on benchmarks)
http://www.soft.lv/docs/jsp/jspjgurufaq/jsp_jgu
http://www.javaworld.com/jw-02-1998/jw-02-jperf
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdn-online/shared/co
Our own benchmarks compared mod_perl, mod_php, ASP, JSP, and Cold Fusion for a relatively simple app. We were dynamically pulling content from a database to build pages for a portal that we were building. We tried to be intelligent about the code we wrote. I'm afraid I don't have the exact results, but our observations were that mod_perl was the fastest, mod_php was about 10% slower, JSPs were about 20% slower than mod_perl, and ASP and Cold Fusion were about 1/4 the speed of mod_perl. The rich environment Java gives us in terms of OO development, JSP tag libraries (create your own HTML tags!), and Java's rich built-in libraries made the choice an easy one.
As for client code, most problems I've seen are:
a) running the JVM with too little memory (the heap size is static when starting the JVM, and defaults to 16MB)
b) running Java on a machine w/ too little memory (to avoid swapping, I recommend 64MB or more)
c) using an older JVM (the garbage collection on older JVMs tends to do nothing for long periods of time, then suspends the process for 5 seconds or longer with JVMs that have poor garbage collection implementations--HotSpot's garbage collection is pretty good, as is Microsoft's JVM.
d) writing code ignorant of the fact that garbage collection is automatic (use object pools to avoid garbage collection costs)
About two years ago, I was in charge of re-writing a raster graphics rendering package used to render seismic data. The old code consisted of a C++ library (shared between our C++ and Java libraries) wrapped by a thin Java layer using JNI. The pure-Java code outperformed the wrapped code by about 5-1 (calling native code from Java results in 2 memory copies of the data for each call--once to enter the native code, once to return). Our pure native code (all C++, no Java) was getting about 20 fps at 1280x1024 on a PII-450. Our Java wrappers were getting about 1-2 fps. Our pure Java code was getting about 6-8 fps (jdk1.2.x). The code was reading the data from disk, converting IBM floating point to IEEE floating point (yes, the oil industry still uses IBM FP), interpolating the data, and rasterizing the data. Once the data was cached (we cached data before the interpolation process), the speed doubled. All in all, that is very acceptable performance. This code actually exposed a floating point math bug in the HotSpot compiler that resulted in HotSpot being about 10x slower than jdk1.2.2 at the time--our code was later incorporated into Sun's internal test suite for HotSpot (we were alpha testers of HotSpot). At this company, a colleague of mine uncovered another bug in Sun's implementation of AWT (their windowing code) that resulted in bypassing hardware video acceleration for all graphic copies (like using the scrollbars). This bug fix resulted in Sun's announcement a while back that "client side performance will see performance improvements as much as 8x".
As you can see, Java's performance problems in the early days was greatly hindered by poor implementations. That should be expected with any reasonably young technology. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Java is a good technology. Current implementations are actually quite decent. Server side performance often bests native code. Client side performance can be quite reasonable. And no more seg faults and memory i/o errors. Debugging cycles are reduced to about 1/5 to 1/10 that of native code debugging. And, in the end, my time is far more valuable than my computer's. Besides, Moore's Law helps make everything copasetic (just ask Microsoft--they've taken advantage of this with every subsequent release of their OS and software).
Re:Netscape won the browser war. (Score:2)
Oh, to get an adequate feeling of performance of Java, please don't use Netscape's VM. Besides being absolutely buggy, it's also the slowest damn thing on earth. Microsoft's is much better, but there are better JVMs available now from Sun and IBM. Download the latest Java plug-in from Sun if you really want to get a good feeling of Java's performance with applets.
That said, I am not a big fan of applets. I don't really do too much with applets. I feel that either a stand-alone application makes more sense, or moving the entire application server-side makes sense. Applets can be useful for certain things (keeping an app server-side, but getting real-time updates of data, for instance).
I will argue that Java's server-side performance is now competative in speed. However, I agree wholeheartedly that client-side performance is still 1/4 to 1/10 the speed of native code. I simply value my programming time far more than my machine's performance (my 2+ year old PII-450 still serves me fine).
Re:Geez, but its got an HTML editor (Score:2)
Netscape 6 shipping = good for Mozilla (Score:2)
Flanagan may be right about PDT being way too conservative, but at this point it's better for everyone if Netscape 6 ships, because it means the Mozilla source tree will open back up to continuing development by both third-party and Netscape developers. This means the Mozilla browser will get better quicker.
The other thing Flanagan misses is that the bugs he cites are minor issues with Mozilla's standards support, not major flaws. I reported an HTML4-compliance bug [mozilla.org] with Mozilla that got pushed off until after the release of Netscape 6 too. I wish it hadn't, but realistically this bug is not going to cause a great deal of trouble, especially not compared to the troubles IE causes by its lack of standards support.
Re:Someone had to say it (Score:2)
Re:Nobody won the browser wars! [OT] (Score:2)
This is the best post I've seen on this subject in ages. Too bad I don't have any moderator points right now...
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
Re:Konqueror (Score:2)
Cheaters win, winners cheat (Score:2)
Standards Compliance not Important if Not Used (Score:2)
I'm creating a website. I look and go "Foobar would work really well here". SoI look up and see what the "standard" way to use foobar is. W3C says foobar should be done this way. So I do it and it doesn't work. Why? Because Netscape 4.x doesn't fully support foobar. Mozilla/Netscape 6 is "working" on full foobar support. IE supports enough foobar not to screw up the page. But Mircosoft being Microsoft they have intelifoobar. Does everything foobar does, and then some.
So what choice do I have? Use intelifoobar. Why? I can make foobar strictly to the "standard". But then nothing can really use it NOW. I can use Intelifoobar and have it work with 80% of the market today. Netscape is a non factor, because it can't do standards compilant foobar anyways. I'd have to re-work everything just to support it. that 15% or so isn't really worth the effort to do something that special for.
Here's my point. If "standards" are set that no one uses. It's useless. I just used foobar in the example, but it's relevant to alot of things. If Netscape and everyone else doesnt' follow all the standards that are set by standards bodies such as the W3C, then they are useless. It less Microsoft dictate what will, and won't be used. So Netscape, do you want to follow the true standards? Or do you want Mircosoft dictate what will and will not work on the web?
HUH? (Re:credit leaching) (Score:2)
To get code into Mozilla, you need a module owner code review, and a "Super" review, done by a senior engineer. That's what r= and sr= means in bugzilla.
When people are in a hurry, sometimes the module owner will allow someone else to do a r=, as long as it is a senior programmer. So what he's saying is that they have a r=x, a sr=y, and the PDT STILL smacked it down with a rtm-, saying "Too risky" or "Not stop ship".
Geez, but its got an HTML editor (Score:2)
These people just don't get it, release a rock solid browser first, if the email client or HTML editor ships later, who cares? Who will remember?
-josh
Consumer awareness (Score:2)
M$ is NOT the better product - they only say they are, and their tactics give them a louder voice.
The cost of using IE isn't just the price of the browser, it's the fact that cookie tracking is now also an 'inseparable' "feature" of the Windows OS.
And that it's not really a faster browser - we pay the browser start-up fee each time we boot up Windows.
And it's not more compliant with Web standards, only with Microsoft extensions to some of those standards.
And the fact that their current position was gained through 'questionable' means...
Yes, I'll agree that Economic Darwinism is the ultimate decision-maker, as in all cases. But then again, isn't it in the consumer's best interest to know the cost of the products that are competing for their attention? What would happen if people chose their Presidential candidate not on the issues and records of those people, or the consequences of their election, but on the number of mispronounciations that they make during speaches... Uhhh... That would be Baaaaaad!
Re:Speak For Yourself. (Score:2)
"knife the baby"? Where ... have you heard that?
IIRC, in the MS trial, Avie Tevanian testefied that MS told Apple to kill QuickTime and stay out of the media market.
Re:MS doesn't make Windows for my hardware. (Score:2)
Let's see...I have 3 PPCs, 1 MIPS, and 1 Sparc.
Yet I can't afford a new G4. (Let alone the dual...)
Point? Surplus hardware is cheap. New hardware isn't.
--K
Ironically, my NT4 disc says that it *supports* MIPS, Alpha, PPC in addition to x86.
---
Re:Konqueror isn't very good. (Score:2)
Re:hi there. (Score:2)
kde2, NO CSS SUPPORT. this means no html4 complaince, not even loose.
No CSS support? Have you even looked at the KDE site the last year? You must have been living on the moon or something - Konqueror supports most of CSS AFAIK!
Further - what has CSS to do with HTML4 compliance? It is 2 seperate standards? You can easily be html4 compliant without CSS!
Re:Konqueror (Score:2)
Suggestions to make KDE faster? (Score:2)
What on earth can I do to make the software more usable? I've asked on dot.kde.org and no one gave any helpful replies, so I thought I'd ask here. I'd really like to get Konq running at a good speed, because I hate using netscape (ugly fonts [no, i won't do that stupid mozfonts hack, because those were no better than what I see right now], crashy crashy syndrome, bad HTML capabilities).
Thanks for any help,
Steve
Re:What is /. coming to? (Score:2)
Re:What is /. coming to? (Score:2)
Thank you for pointing out that your point is irrelevant.
but compare "Visual Basic" to "GCC"
We're not talking about Visual Basic and GCC.
Use the latest Mozilla nightly build (Score:2)
Anyone tech-savvy enough to be reading Slashdot shouldn't be using a consumer-targetted product like Netscape 6 anyway. It's like using a $19.95 drill instead of a Hole Hawg (for those of you who have read In The Beginning Was The Command Line.)
Gerv
Re:Speak For Yourself. (Score:2)
Then how come IE 5.01 writes outside of it's window? How come trivial javascript crashes IE bringing down every open browser window with it? How come it's security is so pathetic?
If IE is the answer, you're asking the wrong question.
Re:Uhhhh, michael? (Score:2)
Yes, that was the original goal. Take the NS4 source, open it, and use an Open Source process to implement the next version. Problem? The NS4 code was, after years of patching, hacking, taping, and stringing it together, incomprehensible, unusable, and basically a dead-end.
So, the source had to be re-engineered -- read "rewritten". Once that decision was made Netscape had to decide whether to go forward, and they decided to go forward, supporting the Mozilla project even though it meant a complete rewrite -- that is, building a browser from scratch.
There are times when I respect the hell out of JWZ (whose comments you've linked to), and there are times when I think he's full of hot air. This time I respect his hot air. I think he's correct in saying that NS5 could've been done in 6 months -- with a set of really good programmers (like him), familiar with the code, with the right processes in place. Unfortunately, while there are some great programmers on Mozilla, some (minority) of the really good ones were not so familiar with the NS4 source. More importantly, the process of opening the source for outside development is largely different from the closed NS in-house process. This multiplies the schedule significantly (my guess is at least 100%).
For the open development process to take advantage of new programmers it has to expose them to the code. This exposure made it clear that those unfamiliar with NS4 code found it essentially unusable.
JWZ decided to leave, and I probably would've done the same in his shoes -- he'd put in his time, he saw the fast track to bringing NS5 to market, but he also realized (I believe) that the actual track that was taken (rebuilding from ground zero) would take a LONG time. That was probably pretty depressing for someone already tired of the Big Netscape culture that had developed.
So anyway, what do you have now? You have the bulk of a browser / web platform which is >95% standards compliant, supports XML at various levels, is cross-platform, implements a portable COM interface, is open source, etc.
Additionally, you have a plethora of open source development tools that have been needed for years: bugzilla, tinderbox, bonsai, etc., as well as open source crypto components and the numerous other open source modules that can be used in future applications.
And... Mozilla raises awareness about Open Source software to the point that the average AOLer is probably somewhat aware that the new Netscape is using that Open Source stuff. That's not a bad thing, IMHO.
While not making the 6-month window on the old NS4 source base is not amazing, the actual speed of development for the browser, tools, modules, and processes for large-scale Open Source development is nothing short of staggering. Of course, you're free not to use Mozilla or NS[56], but that doesn't diminish the magnitude of what has been done.
Re:From a Web Developers point of view (Score:3)
Don't be a moron. Proxiweb can't make any use of that positioning because THERE ISN'T ENOUGH SPACE ON PALM SCREEN. Just to be more or less readable text must be re-formatted, and actually developers of that browser went a long way to make it usable with all kinds of tables, images, etc. that in most of cases wouldn't be readable at all if the screen was just a scrollable window into "perfectly correctly" rendered page -- I will get RSI just from trying to scroll through that monstrosity.
So, developers of the browser are right, and pixel-positioning/overCSS'ing/flash/javascript based design is wrong -- not because of standards but because browser developers made a genuine and mostly successful effort to make their product usable. In the original spirit of the HTML ideas they tried to accomodate whatever will be possible to accomodate into the form that is most useful for the user. And both "standardizators" and stupid "web designers" did their parts in a job that bastardized the web, and made it impossible to accomplish browser's task on their pages, no matter how hard its developers would try to do that. Unless a browser runs on high-resolution screen that I can't put into my pocket, and uses countless megabytes of memory to do the rendering and interpreting.
-1 Flamebait (Score:3)
Joseph Elwell.
he he .. internet standards (Score:3)
standards compliance versus compatibility (Score:3)
See, here's the deal - they SAY they're going to make it 'standards compliant', yet that isn't always the case, depending on which person gets your bug report. If their 'mind'set is as quoted above, then you can forget standards compliance and commonsense layout. Unfortunate, to say the least. The big reason why I want to move to full Flash display ASAP. HTML will be quite useful and stable as a Flash-delivery framework. *not kidding* Check out the features of Flash 5 - it's gettin' scary. Detailed scripting, form fields (as of v4), etc. The
On the flip side - I'd STILL rather use a slightly-less compliant browser (Nav 6) than use a browser imbedded into Windows. The reason? Quite simple (for those simpletons out there) - when Navigator (any version) crashes - it takes itself out. When IE crashes (even as late as v5.5), it usually takes out the whole OS (Win 98SE or Win2K - happens with both).
The 'standards compliance' (such as it is) in Navigator 6 will be plenty good enough for me as long as it doesn't take out the OS with it when it crashes (don't be a fool and think "it won't crash"). My real concern isn't with whether it'll crash a lot or be 100% standards compliant (it'll crash some, and it won't be 100% compliant), but how buggy the implementation of JavaScript, CSS, and the DOM will be. Too many bugs in these (especially CSS) are what have prevented wide-spread implementation thus far (that and users who don't understand the concept of 'upgrade').
Okay, enough ranting. I gotta stop making websites for a living. *sigh*
What is /. coming to? (Score:3)
I guess I shouldn't have expected better from Slashdot. The Slashdot community seems to have given up on free software in favour of lame games and anime, but to advocate a browser that is only available on two platforms as an alternative to a browser that is available on just about every UNIX, MacOS, Win32 and even OpenVMS is just plain ridiculous. IE will never compete with Mozilla because of that.
I would personally recommend Windows and probably MacOS users use IE - at least until there is a Netscape 6, but to see it as an alternative for the Slashdot readership makes me almost laugh.
Of course the correct response to this is: Its Free Software - don't whine - patch! If Netscape management is more worried about shipping than fixing some bugs then fork for god's sake! I would rather them ship a 90% compliant browser than ship nothing and leave us with NS4 on UNIX.
What I would really like to see is Slashdot readers and authors committing some patches instead of fencesitting and whining. You can't consider yourselves to be part of the free software community if you don't commit code (or docs or translations or support or any of the other worthwhile things you could be doing).
Re:Geez, but its got an HTML editor (Score:3)
Full Disclosure: I've used nightly Mozilla builds regularly since M11, and now use Mozilla nightlies more often than any other browser.
This particular argument, frankly, is crap. Have a look at tinderbox or the weekly status reports - and count how many of the fixes are specifically for the composer system.
There is a big, big difference between an HTML editor, and supporting form controls. This was a big mistake that Mozilla made, and they have been trying to get out of recently by decoupling the forms controls from the composer (I believe the code-name for this project is "Ender Lite"). The main "crossover" for the composer is in the mail/news system, and the creation of HTML "enhanced" emails.
Composer is the one part of Mozilla that I don't think should be there. Then again, I'm one of the increasingly small number of people who think that HTML in mail and news is obscene.
Charles Miller
(Whose last five Mozilla posts were rabidly positive, but you have to draw the line somewhere.)
--
Re:Someone had to say it (Score:3)
For the record, Galeon does support SSL.
1) Install PSM in Mozilla as root
2) cd
And it should then automatically work in Galeon.
(something we should probably add to the FAQ)
don't use netscape, use mozilla then! (Score:3)
greetings, eMBee.
--
Re:Someone had to say it (Score:3)
If something is not available to you, it is irrelevant, regardless of how good it may be.
If you choose your OS based on browser availability, then, no, it is no longer an irrelevant point. But choosing an OS based solely on the availability of one application seems to me to be a little silly.
Doug
Re:This is ridiculous. (Score:3)
Incidentally, I use w3m when I need a text-mode browser. Supports frames and tables and has colour support too. See it on freshmeat [freshmeat.net].
Someone had to say it (Score:3)
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for 6, and probably anything that will come in the future. Netscape has joined the dark side, and I get chills any time I try to use it. It's not just the crash factor (they are, after all, still working on it), the bells and whistles, the terrible UI, or the lack of conformity to standards; The problem is also that IE now functions so cleanly and so smoothly that Netscape is hardly a contender anymore.
I hate to say it folks, but the battle is drawing to a finish, and Microsoft is emerging as the victor. Netscape made some serious blunders, and while they may scoop in a few dollars before they go, they will likely disappear within the next few years. The software company I work for has stopped bothering to support Netscape because it is so divergent, and also because within the next year or so it will lose market share until it finds itself in the company of Opera and Lynx.
Did I read that right? (Score:3)
Did you actually say that a Microsoft product is somehow better than an Open Source product? on Slashdot? Are you crazy?
--
Re:Sad but true... (Score:3)
Competitors need NEVER apply!
Pardon me, but it's late, and I'm sick to death of this industry attitude that when someone wins a marketplace battle against Microsoft it's just until the next rev, but when Microsoft wins marketplace battles, it's forever.
This is one plain and simple reason they need to go down the tubes.
Re:Mozilla and Netscape 6 beaten? (Score:3)
I personally like IE better, I am not sure why. A lot of my friends ask me why i like it better and I never have a good answer.
It's because of the subliminal messages, of course!
We've been waiting for over two years... (Score:3)
Don't get me wrong, I'm rooting for Mozilla, but at this point it really looks hopeless.
credit leaching (Score:3)
Sounds like typical management to me. The idea is usualy to attach yourself to anything that may wind up being a good idea. Leaching credit for good work is SOP in every corporation I have seen. Do we realy think Bill Gates or Steve Jobs wrote every line of code themselves? yet who gets the credit? By exhaustively reviewing the fixes, it allows them to take some credit for the fixes themselves, or, if they actualy find a flaw, all that much better. it's a win win......
Mozilla and Netscape 6 beaten? (Score:3)
I personally like IE better, I am not sure why. A lot of my friends ask me why i like it better and I never have a good answer. Now I might, but I still wouldn't underestimate Netscape, Mozilla etc....I don't see Microsoft having an opensource browser, do you?
Re:oh. my. god. (Score:3)
- Faster
- Less crashprone
- More compliant when it comes to international text
- More compliant when the JavaScript is written correctly
Also, Microsoft has a tendency to try things and, if they don't work, ditch them. Remember the Pointcast-like IE 4.0 channels? You have to dig to find them now, if at all, in the newest version of IE.
If people would start using IE, and stop making comments about IE 4.0 and IE 3.0 (which was out years ago -- I don't make comments about how bad Netscape 3.0 was) perhaps they will see it's not such a bad browser after all.
Scorecard for the browser wars (Score:3)
-={(Astynax)}=-
A horrible article, not because Michael is pro-MS (Score:4)
It's a horrible article because it's got it's head up it's ass. If you're going to write an article about standards compliance, the natural thing to do would be to do a comparison. Obviously we can't link to Microsoft's internal bug repository, but makes a straw man argument that somehow, there are no bugs in IE which cause under certain rare circumstances, for IE to violate official web standards.
It's funny to see that some people are willing to pull a stunt like this, in an attempt to get the bugs they care about fixed. Anybody who has been following Mozilla development (like for instance me, this being posted from a version of Mozilla built from CVS earlier today) is aware that some known bugs will be left in NS6 and fixed in NS6.01 or whatever simply because right now they need to ship product. If there's a bug which causes seven pages on the Internet to display slightly incorrectly, they really don't give a shit, and that's GOOD.
No I'm not smoking crack, it really is a good thing. What good will a perfect, bug-free browser do if it's delivered at the same time as emacs 27 and Linux 2.6? If we get a damned good browser out there, it forces a larger portion of the web to make sure they work with IE, and Mozilla. If nothing is shipped, then IE becomes the standard, and there's no chance of preserving a standards based web.
I have nothing against IE, I think it's a great browser, and IE 5 for Mac is, in my opinion, the best browser I've used. The idea that we should abandon mozilla, stop reporting bugs, and hope that IE6 saves the world is even more ignorant than the slashdroids who think that Linux is the only decent operating system in the world.
Congratulations Michael, you and the trolls were having a short dick contest, and it looks like you won.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
Netscape won the browser war. (Score:4)
It was a Pyhrric victory, of course, since Netscape's market share got decimated by Microsoft. But they succeeded in turning the web into a platform.
By the way, I don't fault AOL/Netscape in putting money-making devices in the browser. They have to make money somehow, and they don't have OS or office suite cash cows to support the browser as a loss leader, so they have to recognize some revenue somehow. At least they've continued to support the open source Mozilla project, allowing you to re-build it differently if you so choose. AOL has been more than gracious in keeping the dream of a non-MSproprietary Web alive; they do not deserve our scorn.
--
Re:Someone had to say it (Score:4)
This is a load of utter misinformation. Yes, Internet Explorer is loaded as a part of the Windows Explorer shell when Windows loads. However, if you configure Windows not to load the Explorer shell on startup, or to use a different shell, you can then start Internet Explorer separately (from a commandline, for example), and the load time is exactly the same. The simple fact is, IE is far less bloated than Netscape, far more compliant, and just plain faster.
I'm really tired of these stupid flamefest articles on slashdot about Netscape/Mozilla/MSIE. One minute it's /. saying how wonderful mozilla is, keep up the great work, blah blah blah. Then it's michael coming off looking like a class-A idiot.
The only people who come off looking like idiots are people who either ignore the facts or twist them to fit their own opinions. michael has done neither -- he has in fact presented a very valid and well-informed opinion, backed by factual information. You, on the other hand, have not. Between you and michael, I'd say you come off looking like the idiot, my friend.
It might help if the editors would just post the news instead of their opinions.
michael posted the news first, and then gave his opinion. This is what Slashdot has been all about since the very beginning. This is what Chips n' Dip was about back when CmdrTaco was running it from college, even before Slashdot. The fusing of news with opinions is what makes Slashdot different from other bland news sites. Open your eyes.
--
Gee whiz... slashdot implosion? (Score:4)
I'm know I'll get mod'd down for saying this, but...
Whoever posted this must have been having and extremely bad day. Let's review the post (posters notes, not quotations from the article):
Hrm... perhaps someone ("michael") was:
Personally I think that slashdot is having serious quality problems. Crap is getting posted all too often, and good stuff is getting refused. Articles like this don't even deserve the bytes they are printed on (err, what a sec here...
I remember a slashdot that was run by a single person, and that person ran a quality site. Back then the quality of the site was directly tied to his reputation... now however, things are seeming different.
-Chris
Re:Konqueror (Score:4)
IE isn't on all platforms (Score:4)
-Compenguin
What? (Score:4)
Konqueror (Score:4)
Full HTML4.0 compliance
Full ECMAscript 262 support (Javascript)
Java applets
Full CSS1 and partial CSS2 compliance
Full SSL support (with openSSL)
This is definitely the browser to use if you're on a unix system. It's great for those that want an open source browser that is lightweight (no email/news clients, as there are other KDE apps for that).
-Justin
(Score:5)
Eh. Clearly, you haven't been using Mozilla regularly. It isn't yet as good as (say) IE 5.5 for Mac, but it is vastly better than Netscape 4.x and getting better all the time.
"and will stay that way."
How exactly do you justify that? Oh, wait, I forgot- this is slashdot, not actual journalism.
Seriously, if this article were a comment, it would get modded into the ground as flamebait, because Michael is making claims that are not only tenously grounded in reality, but which he completely fails to back up at all. Furthermore, it completely ignores most of us who are not willing to run products that aren't free, Windows first and foremost among them.
Please, please
~luge
Speak For Yourself. (Score:5)
Historically, Microsoft made some pretty crappy software. Things are changing, however, and they don't deserve the flaming that they get on this site. Yes, they're closed-source. Hell, RedHat makes closed-source software. **MOST** companies make closed-source software. But in terms of stability and quality, Win2k and IE 5.01 are awesome products.
Before you get your panties in a knot, let me tell you that I ran Linux from early 1994 until 1998, when I switched to FreeBSD. My job title is "Senior UNIX Administrator" and I've spent more than my share of time at a bash prompt. I've played with nearly every OS out there, both open and closed-source. I stand by my opinion that IE and Win2k are excellent products.
And for your statement that "IE will never compete with Mozilla", well, you're just plain wrong. IE's user base is growing daily. IE came farther along in a matter of a year than Mozilla has done in its lifetime. Like it or not, most of the world uses (and will continue to use) Microsoft Windows.
Don't trust M$ - they cheat. (Score:5)
It's exactly the sort of blind regurgitation of opinions, as skillfully demonstrated by the troll message I'm responding to, that has gotten us where we are now.
Re:Konqueror (Score:5)
I'll second that!
Konqueror is an amazing browser, it's sad that a lot of people will never touch it, just because it is a KDE app.
The only site I've seen it doesn't display correctly, is www.zdnet.com
It has excellent cookie handling, you can set the minimum font size and it is faster than every other browser I've seen (including, Mozilla, IE4/5/5.5, Netscape, Opera)!
Those who haven't even given it a try yet, should really take the time at give it a try - you will not be disappointed!
Re:Someone had to say it (Score:5)
The majority of the support code used by IE has been transferred into dynamic libraries that are loaded to perform other basic functions of the operating system. They merged most of IE into DLLs that are automatically loaded as part of the standard functions of Windows (with or without Explorer). This was demonstrated in some of the prosecution's expert testimony during the trial. If it's still on-line, re-read Rich Gray's coverage of the trial in the San Jose Mercury News.
It's part of the reason why every successive version of IE has significantly slowed down the machine it runs on. Try running applications on a 16 MB Windows 95 box, vs. the same machine after IE 5 is installed. Tell me the latter doesn't run slower and start swapping sooner, even if you start up with cmd.exe instead of explorer.
Uhhhh, michael? (Score:5)
Mozilla != Netscape, but Netscape is being built on Mozilla.
-------------
Re:Someone had to say it (Score:5)
Did You Read The Freaking Article? (Score:5)
I can't believe you got modded up as insightful. The article gives props to Mozilla which is the Open Source project not Netscape. The problem is that Netscape is ignoring all the fruits of the Open Source nature of Mozilla by refusing patches and the like to standards compliance problems.
I agree that for a site that pushes Open Source micheal should have pushed Mozilla instead of IE but it seems you are under the mistaken assumption that Mozilla and Netscape 6 are the same project which is untrue.
Mozilla is NOT Netscape
Second Law of Blissful Ignorance
hmm... and if you'd read the article... (Score:5)
the article is about how Netscape [www.netsca...mtargetnew]'s people aren't implementing Mozilla's [www.mozilla.orgtargetnew] patches.
That's the story in a nutshell. Don't hold your breath to apt-get MSIE 6.0... Mozilla is working on these problems, and they're not worried about release dates
Again from the article: There's a link about signing the petition, and some very egregious examples of Netscape (despite railings by Mozilla) not implementing pre-existing fixes.
There's still hope... for those of us who wait for Mozilla.
__
alt.geek
What is this guy's problem? (Score:5)
Unfortunately, this is going to mean that some documented "misbehaviours" will not be fixed for Netscape 6. They'll be fixed in Mozilla, and fixed in later releases of Netscape, but they won't be fixed in this one. Oh well - sometimes, that happens. If it this matters to you, use Mozilla instead of Netscape. Or, use Internet Explorer.
But Netscape has to realease something. That fetid pile of refuse they've been limping along on for the last few years is simply horrible -- it doesn't even pretend to support any of standards proposed by w3 in the last four years. The CSS1 support is a cruel, hideous joke. The CSS positional content crap makes my hair turn grey. The DOM is entirely non-standard, and provides almost no scriptable elements -- essentially, Netscape v4 allows you to swap images, hide and show layers, and manipulate form elements. Thats it. Its hardly more than Netscape 2 provided. Some incredible effects have been created using these paltry tools, but I shudder to think how much hair someone lost trying to create them. Internet Explorer is much, much easier to develop for -- it supports the w3 proposed standards much, much better than Netscape v4 ever did. In some cases, it supports them as well as Netscape v6 plans to.
Unfortunately, there is only one widely used standards compliant browser -- Internet Explorer. More and more websites will abandon Netscape in the coming years. I am certain of this. If a credible standards compliant competitor to IE emerges, then I believe most developers will develop to those specifications. Unfortanately, if no competitor implementing CSS or the DOM emerges, then developers will continue developing to IE's implementation of those specifications, along with all the other non-stadard extensions IE introduces.
Frankly, the abandonment of Netscape is happening today, and the problem is going to accelerate. Unless some browser gets a toe hold in now, soon the web will be full of IE specific pages -- pages which follow no published standard, but instead are written to whatever implementation those guys at Redmond decides to give us. We need a second standards compliant browser available for most platforms, so that people have a reason to use the standards. A standard is only useful in the face of competition.
Re:Netscape won the browser war. (Score:5)
Netscape had nothing to do this. The web is popular as a platform because it takes the fabled client-server architecture to the masses.
The benefits of a client-server architecture became apparent to all in the late 80s, but until the web appeared, writing a decent client-server application either required an advanced degree on networking and distributed systems, or the purchase of a closed-platform solution.
All that changed with the arrival of the web. You could flush all of netscape's buggy code down the toilet and people would still have developed for the web. Is the sensible thing to do in most cases.
AOL and Netscape deserve scorn for claiming the high moral ground of standards and openess only when they are losing. As soon as the have a dominant position they piss on them, such as with the blink tag.
From A Web Developer's Standpoint... (Score:5)
You see, by releasing it as a 6.0 (not beta, but just as a version), people will download it, and not download anything for a while (people don't like downloading new stuff -- it tends to be slower and clunkier). As a result, developers will have to start (learning) how to develop for 6.0 -- programming for its quirks ON TOP of what they already have to do right now (we have to separate IE/NS, then by major version number, and if we're doing really funky stuff, by minor version number).
That's a WHOLE LOT OF CRAP. The article makes some good points.
I guess it comes down to: is it better for NS to release a buggy browser that people are pissed off about? Or is it better that they not release another (yet again) for a while and risk losing even MORE market share.
--
Re:oh. my. god. (Score:5)
Some of [the standards] are too vague on what the different elements should look like...
If you're talking about HTML (as opposed to CSS), that's deliberate! The Web was not designed to be WYSIWYG. HTML is for content markup, not visual markup. If you need absolute control over the look of a page (why?), use Flash or some other plug-in.
Nobody won the browser wars! (Score:5)
What a week (Score:5)
Now all we need is for the Transmeta IPO [yahoo.com]