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Netscape The Internet

MozillaZine Editorial On Netscape Criticism 107

Posted by Hemos from the stir-up-the-fire-pot dept.
RAD Kade 1 writes "An editorial on mozillazine.org is criticizing recent criticism against Netscape. Netscape stories will also no longer be posted on mozillazine.org, only Mozilla-related items."
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MozillaZine Editorial On Netscape Criticism More

MozillaZine Editorial On Netscape Criticism

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  • Re:Who's the "WSP" (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The WSP is the Web Standards Project [webstandards.org]. They've posted a criticism of MozillaZine's criticism of Flanagan's original criticism [webstandards.org].

  • MozillaZine is down - slashdotted to hell and back (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 07, 2000 @09:51AM (#641900)
    Our site is down, because our host's network has been overrun. Hopefully it will be back up later today. --chris http://www.mozillazine.org/
  • Great site! From what i can see on the css bug page, mozilla has *far* more of the happy green boxes than ie5. In fact, a few of the smaller tables it is the only one with all green (eg: box sizing properties).

    Funnily enough, going to the site in konqueror rendered a white page with a few colored lines, and white text (on a white background) :)

  • As it is, web developers will have to deal with NS4 bugs for years to come.

    Your point being? We've had to deal with bugs and incompatibilities in IE and Netscape both for years, and bitched and moaned about it the whole time. Finally Netscape puts out a browser that is standards compliant (or will be once the bugs are worked out), and you're bitching about that too? If they had put out an intermediate release, it wouldn't have made the situation any better. It still wouldn't be standards compliant. You still would've had to rework your existing apps to use it, and you'd still have to do it again when NS6 was released.

  • An intermediate release should have supported the existing standards that NS4 tried to support before tackling anything more difficult

    Had they tried to make a standards-compliant release before devoting their effort to Mozilla, we'd still be at least a year away from seeing a stable, fully functional release of Mozilla. Mozilla was originally based on the Netscape 4 code-base, but that was scrapped after about a year when they decided that it was just too unwieldy to work with. Then they started from scratch to build what we know as Mozilla today.

    They shouldn't have tried to implement new standards until they had released a browser that didn't butcher the existing ones.

    What new standards? They've been getting the support for the oldest standards down first and then moving forward from there. Yes, they've been adding features and stuff as well, but when you've got a lot of developers working for free, and the rest working to produce something that consumers will want to use, you pretty much have to add the features. They could crank out a browser that adheres to standards, but doesn't have many features, and then nobody would want to use it, so it wouldn't really be helping anyone. Better to just let them get the final product out when it's finished. Maybe it will serve as an incentive for Microsoft to finally start adhering to standards as well.

  • That is my point - the first release after opening the source should have been to simply let web developers write standards-compliant code without hobbling their code and writing convoluted workarounds for Netscape.

    That's what they were planning as I understand it. The problem was that the existing code sucked and was proving to be unworkable, so they scrapped it and started over. Maybe they could have kept at it until they got it to at least the point where IE is (which still isn't very good), but the end product would still be crap due to the fact that the codebase sucked. Look how often Netscape crashes. I am glad they decided to start over and do it right.

    Microsoft have released three revisions of Internet Explorer since Mozilla was opened, and each one of them supported HTML, CSS and DOM better than Netscape.

    And yet no version of IE really supports the standards completely, and the Windows version doesn't even come within sight of full support.

  • He's got some great points. (Score:5)

    by Hrunting ( 2191 ) on Tuesday November 07, 2000 @09:01AM (#641906) Homepage
    The same people who are saying that Netscape 6 shouldn't be released because it isn't standards compliant are the same people who just recently said that Netscape should've released an interim browser between 4.7x and 6.x that at least implemented some standards.

    What's increasingly becoming important, though, is that the people doing this criticism are not programmers. They are web developers. mozillaZine's stance is largely taken because the people doing the majority of the flaming are not people actively involved in bettering the project. They're like Monday morning quarterbacks.

    FWIW, I've been using the Mozilla nightly builds for at least 6 months and they've been, for the most part, rock-solid. Yes, every once in a while something crops up stylesheets or the DOM (there's a particularly annoying bug right now where DOM form objects contain element entries from other DOM form objects), but for the most part, the code is solid, and some of the improvements (like incrememtal table display) are beautiful to use.

  • If you do get it running, visit one or two simple websites and check the memory/CPU utilization in the Task Monitor. Be careful not to misinterpret the numbers.

    This is the most bloated software I have ever seen... and it doesn't appear to be leaking. This triples Lotus Notes R5 with the Client and Designer running!!!

    The Virtual Memory utilization creeps up to 100MB, and judging by the sluggish performance of my machine, and how long it takes to bring up the process when it has been idle for a few hours, I have no reason to believe that these numbers are not a close reflection of the truth. Right now, with six windows open, and my mail open with over 20 MB of mail, Netscape 4.7 shows less than 14MB in use.

    I can't even read newsgroups in mozilla, the video refresh on a P-Pro 200 w. 128MB of RAM is unbearable. It is as sluggish as 256 colours on an unaccelerated ISA video card.

    I keep hoping this all gets cleared up before release, but there is no indication of it. While it appears to be a very slick product, and in many areas there are definately speed improvements, I cannot burden my machine with that bloated code.

    I just launched m17 on my K6-2 500 w. 96M of RAM and it took 26 seconds. I hit the about button and over 16MB were being consumed. I've seen little difference between memory utilization of M17 and Beta3

    The worst part used to be that it offers no new features. Now the worst part is that it offers no new features, is bloated, all the while adding more complexity to web development.

    Every bit of FUD I have read has confirmed what I have personally witnessed.

    (I'll go to Karma hell for this.)

  • I'd say web developers (like myself) have a better perspective on what's what than the programmers of the mozilla project. We're the ones whose jobs depend on this stuff working right - and we'll be stuck with having to code to that platform for _YEARS_ to come. Any flaws in the platform are ours to deal with for a very long time, as opposed to the programmers who can simply upgrade their browser whenever they want. Web developers have to code to every piece of junk put out by the 'big two' (MS & Netscape) for the past 2 years, so we're understandably more concerned than most about standards-compliance and common-sense layout.

  • ummm (Score:1)

    by mincus ( 7154 )
    Correct me if Im wrong, but it seems that he is say that it is not Netscapes fault that it blows now. He thinks that we should take into consideration that they are being forced to release before they are ready, and to put features in that they dont want. Thats a real shame that that is happening, BUT, that doesnt change the fact that it BLOWS.

    on the other hand, I do think that peanuts are cute.
  • Its true that Mozilla contains dubious features for ticklist-compatibility with NS4.0 and IE4+. Thats inevitable. Anyone who's ever worked for a software product company will know that releasing version n+1 with less features than version n is suicide, even if the features were stupid in the first place. Perhaps more effort should have gone into differentating Mozilla from Communicator, so that Mozilla could just have been a good browser, but that might have raised other problems.

    Skinning however is not such a dubious feature. Its a side effect of a brave attempt to do something which is very hard: create a cross-platform framework for user interfaces. The old Netscape front ends (one per platform) were an immense obstacle to development. They proliferated, and they tended to accumulate features that should have been elsewhere (URL completion in the Windows version). Netscape felt they were committed to supporting the Unix versions as a differentiator fromm MS, and yet could not justify the development resources to support something used by only a few percent of their users. *Thats* why NS4.0 on X is so crash-prone and slow: the FE code is buggy as hell, and pulls a lot of nasty X tricks.

    Mozilla does its UI using its rendering engine precisely in order to get away from this problem. A side effect is that you can write pretty chrome, but that was not the purpose. You may feel the decision was wrong, and Galeon et al would seem to show that you might be right, but its an utterly different issue from sidebars and "What's related?".
  • Is there a moderately objective site that explains what browsers are and aren't compliant with what? I've read all the assertions here that Mozilla is "the most standards compliant". I've read that IE 5 on the Mac is the most compliant. iCab and Konqueror are touted as compliant. I'd be interested in seeing a thorough review.

    I don't think it specifically covers IE 5 on Mac or Konquereror, but I've always found Rich in Style [richinstyle.com] to be a great resource for testing compliance and documenting the state of browsers.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Completely false.
    • The SmartDownload library used in the Netscape 6 installer is not the same as the 1.1 standalone client that had the privacy problem (which has itself been fixed)
    • The download agent is not left behind after the install, so it isn't there to report anything even if it did that sort of thing

  • Yes, I have to agree with you on that. Web Developers (of which I am one) want to be able to design sites that work well with the 'lowest common denominator' functionality in the browsers out there. If things break even more under Netscape then that gets harder. I for one will be sticking with Netscape 4.7x and recommending to my company (We use Netscape for mail at work as well as internet browsing) that we do not upgrade until these things can be sorted out and proved to be better.

    It'd be worthwhile for Netscape to realize just WHO is going to use the product and how releasing a half-baked piece of software does noone a service and will probably alienate yet more people against Netscape - something I thought they didn't want.

    --
  • The skins work, it must be done.

    --- This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine. ---

  • *THIS* is what the article (and external mozilla contributors) are complaining about. Because of the PDT being so ultra-conservative, there are at least *40* (if not much more) fixes that have gone into the trunk (Mozilla), that haven't been allowed into the branch (Netscape 6).

  • No, I don't use Mail/News on Mozilla. I have occasionally tried the newsreader. It works, though the list scrolling is slow. As the same code handles mail there shouldn't be to big problems handling huge mailboxes. If there are, it would be valuable help to report them.

    But back up your mail before giving it a try :-). Oh, and check the build bar on Mozillazine to see which builds are good ones to test.

  • Well here's mine. I've been using Mozilla nightly builds as my main browser for close to a month. It renders sites beautifully. Way better than the old Netscape 4.

    Also people should notice that Mozilla/Netscape 6 can be patched later. So it's really not a big deal if the first one is not perfect. Rendering all those standards and doing it right is not easy but Mozilla does it nicely already.

  • They have a point (Score:5)

    by robinjo ( 15698 ) on Tuesday November 07, 2000 @09:05AM (#641920)

    I think they do have a point. Like several people pointed out on Mozillazine, Mr. Flanagan is complaining that the the most standard-compliant browser is not compliant enough. Someone even called this Bugzilla abuse as nobody gets to see Microsoft's uncensored bug database.

    Mozilla is a big project and it's pretty useless for outsiders to decide what should be fixed next. There's a lot of bugs to fix and features to create and only those programmers know what to do next.

    I also think that Mozillazine is right in distancing themselves from Netscape 6. Mozilla is another project and the decision makers are not same. Netscape 6 will be released sooner while Mozilla will continue to evolve until it's rock solid.

    While I'm writing this I'd like to bring up an alarming thing about Mozilla. After testing a lot of nighly builds, I have to say that the Linux builds are not nearly as far as Win32 builds. I'd love to see more contribution to the Linux development. If you don't have the skills and time to hack code, download nighly builds, report bugs and confirm old ones. It does help creating Mozilla the best browser there is. Complaining and jokes about Mozilla being dead won't.

  • /.ed? (Score:2)

    by ywwg ( 20925 )
    I get mozillazine.org unknown host. anyone have a mirror?
  • I think a release of netscape 6 is a good thing , even with bugs (lets face it we'll all upgrade with every new release anyway or use mozilla 1.0), it means the developers can go back to getting lot of stuff checked in to the development tree again (things have been slow due to the strict nature of checkins just before Release to Manufacturing). Hopefully we'll see some preformance improvements! -not that it's so bad just now, but we do need to give people goals in their lives, especially downtrodden mozilla developers...
  • I mean, other than an example of a software project that's gone horribly wrong, does Mozilla or Netscape really have any relevence to anything?

    Ah well, they will be an interesting footnote in history if nothing else, I suppose...
  • But in the case of Netscape 6 the problems with CSS and DOM support are more in the area of bugs rather than deviations from standards (like in older versions of Netscape).

  • Normally I'm not a big fan of shipping buggy products.

    However, even with a few large bugs in support for CSS and DOM, I'd prefer they ship it soon as it would still be vastly better than the old Netscape, and I could start asking people at my company and vendors I talk to if what they are doing works in Nertscape 6. Right now the answer is always "It's still in beta". Netscape can always ship a patch soon after (escpecially if the fixes are already in place in Mozilla and just need testing). They always seem to release a patch soon after anyway...

  • Re:He's got some great points. (Score:4)

    by furiousgeorge ( 30912 ) on Tuesday November 07, 2000 @09:15AM (#641926)
    >What's increasingly becoming important, though, >is that the people doing this criticism are not
    >programmers. They are web developers.

    Unless i'm missing the point, the ARE the people that should be criticizing it.

    The project is at a stage that it shouldn't be judged on it's code beauty, design, bug burn rate, or social importance. It needs to be judged if it works or not. And i'd think web developers should be pretty high on the list.

    Thats like saying drivers aren't allowed to judge cars, only engineers.

    >mozillaZine's stance is largely taken because >the people doing the majority of the flaming are
    >not people actively involved in bettering the >
    >project.

    just because you don't like 'who' is flaming, doesn't make them 'wrong'. That a very old (and low in my book) political tactic. If you can't attact the words your opponent uses, attack the opponent.

    j
  • This is a Slashdot post criticising the other posts' criticism of the article criticising the criticism of Netscape. Sheesh ... critics ...
  • Egad! If you did that, your web pages would LOAD FAST! People would quickly and easily GET INFORMATION! Oh, goodness. That would be a total disaster.

    It's so much better to hide the fact that the site has no real purpose behind randomly placed rollover buttons (that requre the download of no fewer than six images for a single button) and little starts swirling around the cursor.
  • Netscape 6's CSS support is more standards-compliant than anything else on the market, with the possible exception of IE 5.5 on the Mac.

    And how is that going to help the people who have spent countless hours working around some obscure Netscape 4 bug over the past few years? If there had been a release between the horrific NS4 and the just-one-more-feature NS6, then NS4 would be a legacy browser that hardly anyone would use any more due to bugs. As it is, web developers will have to deal with NS4 bugs for years to come.

  • We've had to deal with bugs and incompatibilities in IE and Netscape both for years, and bitched and moaned about it the whole time. Finally Netscape puts out a browser that is standards compliant (or will be once the bugs are worked out), and you're bitching about that too? If they had put out an intermediate release, it wouldn't have made the situation any better. It still wouldn't be standards compliant.

    You seriously think that two whole years of development went into supporting the existing standards? An intermediate release should have supported the existing standards that NS4 tried to support before tackling anything more difficult, and definitely before chucking in a whole mess of other features.

    At the moment, it's impossible to use a lot of complex CSS on a site, simply because NS4 will render the pages completely unusable (I'm talking unclickable links, content off-screen with no scrollbars, overlapping areas, etc). They shouldn't have tried to implement new standards until they had released a browser that didn't butcher the existing ones.

  • Had they tried to make a standards-compliant release before devoting their effort to Mozilla, we'd still be at least a year away from seeing a stable, fully functional release of Mozilla.

    Since Mozilla is the devname for the Netscape browser, I assume you mean we'd be a year away from a stable release of a Mozilla that has the same features as it has right now?

    What new standards? They've been getting the support for the oldest standards down first and then moving forward from there. Yes, they've been adding features and stuff as well,

    OK, just stop there for a sec. This is my point - they should have given the bug fixes priority over new features (obviously keeping existing features is a must), and then released NS5.

    but when you've got a lot of developers working for free, and the rest working to produce something that consumers will want to use, you pretty much have to add the features.

    Yes, because nobody would use a browser that didn't have inbuilt terminals and a non-native interface...</sarcasm>

    They could crank out a browser that adheres to standards, but doesn't have many features, and then nobody would want to use it, so it wouldn't really be helping anyone.

    This isn't about removing features - just not adding everything some random hacker produces a patch for into the codebase. That is my point - the first release after opening the source should have been to simply let web developers write standards-compliant code without hobbling their code and writing convoluted workarounds for Netscape.

    Better to just let them get the final product out when it's finished. Maybe it will serve as an incentive for Microsoft to finally start adhering to standards as well.

    Microsoft have released three revisions of Internet Explorer since Mozilla was opened, and each one of them supported HTML, CSS and DOM better than Netscape.

  • Netscape 6's CSS support is more standards-compliant than anything else on the market, with the possible exception of IE 5.5 on the Mac.
  • As soon as Netscape 6 is released, a huge number of pending bug fixes and new features that are currently waiting to be checked into the Mozilla trunk will be checked in. (This is already happening actually.) Let them stabilise for about a month, and then Netscape management --- if they want to --- can cut another branch and release Netscape 6.1 after another month or two of QA.

    So Netscape could, if they want to, release a much improved 6.1 within three months of NS 6.0. Of course, I have no idea what their actual plans are.
  • Mac IE 5.5 standards compliance is pretty good, maybe better than Mozilla right now. But the fact is that most people use Win IE 5.5, which is significantly worse than Mozilla. This is according to independent sites like richinstyle.com.

  • Re:He's got some great points. (Score:3)

    by roca ( 43122 ) on Tuesday November 07, 2000 @10:15AM (#641935) Homepage
    No, Netscape 6 will benefit as soon as Netscape 6.1 comes out.
  • After I installed it and started it, it just plain silently hangs. [...] NS 4.* work fine on this box with no problem. [...] Stop the BS. Netscape can not write robust software.

    Hmmm. The fourth sentence I quoted contradicts the second. But seriously, do you think that the beta hangs without starting on everybody's computer? Don't you think the reviews would be a bit worse if it did? And note the word ``beta'' in that sentence.
  • ahhh.. I think a lot of open source coders look for some sort of leadership in the project and will accept it with open arms. A very basic part of the open source development process is the odd numbered release schedule. Say you have a program that is version 0.1.1.. you would expect it to be buggy and no new features are going to show up until 0.2.0.. When the minor version number is odd we do bug fixes, when the minor version number is even we do feature implementation. The real problem here is a lack of automated tests. For each class in the project there should be a thorough testing class that can generate go/no go responses for regression testing. Patches to the code base that do not comply with the odd versioning system or the testing regime or even the documentation requirements should be politely declined.
  • mmm.. infinite regression.
  • ahh... vegetarian's don't usually go around shooting things.. you should see some medical attention. I personally would just walk past and do nothing and if I saw a greenie on the way I would flip the bird at them and then ask them what THEY are gunna do about it.
  • While the person you are replying to didn't make this point, here is the one being overlooked...

    The people bitching about NS6 not being standards compliant right now are the same exact people who said about a month ago "Dangit, hurry up and release the thing and fix the bugs later."
  • Run the testcases attached to those bugs, and posted in the bug comments.

    The one that shocked me the most was the table cellpadding bug. That is a huge regression. On top of that, the patch is already written, but it is not going to make it into the Netscape 6.0 tree unless something is changed.

    The regressions being patched will not hold up the release at all. Apply the patches, Netscape, and we all will be happy.

  • too many times /. posts one viewpoint and then fails to post an article pointing to a formal response from the person or group as a reaction to the flood of /.'ers. I think the mozillazine editorial should get screen time just as much as the original web standards article did.

    This editorial does make some good or at least interesting comments and made me re-think my knee-jerk reaction to the first article posted here.

  • Meta-Criticism (Score:4)

    by Zach Garner ( 74342 ) on Tuesday November 07, 2000 @08:59AM (#641943)
    An editorial on mozillazine.org is criticizing recent criticism against Netscape

    I hate meta-criticism. Dammit, That was meta-meta-criticism. AGHHH.
  • It's not even about bad press, it's about the years that web develoeprs will have to put up with the bugs while waiting for 7.0, which will probably be, given Netscape's track record, no better.
  • But in the case of Netscape 6 the problems with CSS and DOM support are more in the area of bugs rather than deviations from standards (like in older versions of Netscape).

    So they're just bugs, not deviations from standards... By this logic, you feel that they should ship it anyway?

    "Hey, they're just bugs, ship it anyway.

    What I'm complaining about is having to find workarounds for things that are supposed to work but don't. Label the issues whatever you want to, I'd just rather they shipped a more complete product, since they obviously have the option to do so.

  • Re:He's got some great points. (Score:5)

    by AugstWest ( 79042 ) on Tuesday November 07, 2000 @09:13AM (#641946)
    Well, you're ignoring the issue that Netscape is not just a browser, it is, as was stated at O'Reilly, a development platform.

    If my company could get back all of the countless hours wasted trying to find the workarounds necessary to get standardized functions to work in Netscape, we'd be way ahead of the game.

    As a developer working on a project, you *have* to be mindful of the end user. If we release a web-based software package, like millions of other companies around the world, we'd like to know that building our interfaces to standards isn't wasted time.

    We'd like to know that if we're doing something that sticks to the spec, Netscape isn't going to screw us over by deciding that they need to get the browser out the door before it is compliant.

    Stylesheet issues, JavaScript issues, session issues... These should be no-brainers, but instead we end up wasting valuable resources trying to figure out if we can work around some Netscape bug or if we'll have to completely throw out some bit of functionality.

    Stylesheet support is *essential*. You talk about it like it's not a big deal to you, but when more and more software packages are going to web-based paradigms, things like this become make-or-break issues. Not having full stylesheet support is just... ludicrous.

  • Netscape deserves what they're getting (Score:5)

    by Tridus ( 79566 ) on Tuesday November 07, 2000 @09:38AM (#641947) Homepage
    Some of these bugs aren't minor, they're fairly serious "you can't use the DOM properly on a table" types of problems, and things which used to work in 4.x and don't anymore. In its current state, all Netscape 6 will do is create another browser to code for, with another set of quirks and bugs.

    There is some help if you don't use the DOM, since things like HTML 4 and CSS seem to be working pretty well.

    But I guess the problem is that the Netscape people want to release no matter what, and you almost have to beat on them with a book to get them to include fixes. Anybody remember a few weeks ago when we had the bug that was causing large grey lines in everything? They had to be browbeaten to include a fix for that.

    That reminds me of Microsoft, who suffers severe criticism for doing it. So why should Netscape get special treatment?
  • I've been debating whether or not to post.
    I will, with this disclaimer. I work for Netscape, but not in product development.
    It's true that standards in PR3 are broken - CSS doesn't display correctly, or at all, for example. However, I believe this is temporary, and that standards compliance is a big issue with Netscape in general. Evidence of that is here [netscape.com], although it may seem like propaganda-speak.
    I've also had the privilege of trying out some of the internal nightly builds, and they have come a long way. There's still a ways to go, but keep in mind, Netscape 6 is still in the pre-release stage. Out of respect for my employer, I'm trying not to divulge too much information, so please understand why this post is a little detail-thin. :)


    "During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
  • The criticisms are coming from the USERS which is EXACTLY how it should be. Do you think any user even remotely cares that the whole thing was gutted and made a stable multi-OS development platform? No, they care that they didn't have any upgrades and that what did get delivered a year or more late doesn't work well.

    So ask yourself, for what other reason is Netscape developed but to be USED by USERS ??? Why there was no 5.x is precisely because Netscape/Mozilla 'forgot' who their users are (or were as is the de facto state now). I take a look at Mozilla ever month or so but I find no compelling reason to make myself use it except to a) support the project and b) make life harder on myself. (I use win32 as my desktop os)
  • If you are still unsure about Mozilla (or NS6 for that matter), try installing ForumZilla [zapogee.com] and read that MozillaZine article and it's comments in it. Compare that experience to reading it on the web and maybe it will change your mind.

    There are a lot of really cool things you can do with Mozilla and ForumZilla is just the begining.

    Tony

  • Actually... (Score:3)

    by Fnkmaster ( 89084 ) on Tuesday November 07, 2000 @08:55AM (#641951)
    If you read a little deeper you'll see that he replies to a reply to his posting. He plans on posting "news" on Netscape, but not "reviews, criticism" and other info (sorry, I'm not digging up the link or quoting it verbatim for you). Personally, I imagine he's just frustrated from the flamage coming from both directions (pro- and anti- NS) and from those inside and outside the Mozilla community and is trying to distance what he puts his effort into, the Open Source project Mozilla, from the corporate entity Netscape.
  • There are the same tree. NS6 is just a branch of the mozilla tree
  • You're forgetting that the programmers of mozilla have already fixed many of the standards problems in netscape 6, but the patches arn't being implemented. Yes, mozilla is generally rock-solid... but nestcape 6 won't benifit from all of that stability unless the recommendations of the initial criticizm are carried out.

  • I'm afraid I've got to agree. The versions of Win32 Mozilla I'ved used have been quite far ahead of the Linux versions. However, M18 came closer to closing that gap, and it (aside from a few bugs) is pretty close to the performance I'd expect from NS4.x and IE. I haven't tried NS6, but from everything I've heard, they took Mozilla and trimmed out anything remotely worthwhile.


    -RickHunter

  • Worse:

    All that's left is a widget or two. The skinnablility got dropped because AOL was afraid users would get confused.


    -RickHunter
  • Here's the real showstopper in that page - it's not the rendering time. I'm using a pentium pro 200 with well over 300 MB RAM...

    i started that page loading in a separate window.

    as i type this, most of the navigation controls (in netscape 4.75 unde win95) are gone, and little bits of the desktop are showing through. i tried to reply to the parent in a new window: "NETSCAPE CANNOT CREATE EMPTY DOCUMENT" or some such thing. (i'm just using the same window now, before i reboot.)

    i tried to save a file from a different page, and not only was the file save window rendered badly, the fonts inside that window were all wrong.

    nice. very nice.

  • My test for "compliance" is whether I can read the sites I want to read

    That is the most non-sensical thing I've read today. Do you realize how idiotic that sounds? You claim to know what's going on 'under the hood' of your browser. Great. Do you have any concept what standards are for? Apparently not, so let me explain. Standards are like a contract between two parties. In this case, one party is the broswer designers, the other are the web-developers. If everyone follows the standards, then anyone can use any browser to view any page. A wonderfull utopian ideal, and everyone benefits. If we all decide to use your "I can see what I wanna see" test, then we go back to the dark ages of "best viewed with IE 4.5 at 1600x1200 resolution with 8-bit color while standing on your head." I don't want that to happen again. Standards are good. Get your head out of the sand and realize that.

    God does not play dice with the universe. Albert Einstein

  • Unlike IE 5.5, Mozilla can be downloaded and installed in an hour without the need to reboot or replace half of your system DLLs to do it.

    ONLY if you happen to be running linux ,mac, or winblows. Otherwise, you are indeed stuck in "well first compile this, this this, AND this. and THEN go through a very long compile"

    THe REALLY irritating thing is that they CLAIM to support other platforms for binaries. But just try clicking on some of the other "nightly build" links on the TOP PAGE. The i386-solaris link has been non-functional for about a YEAR now, I think.

    And what a beast of a source tree. I mean, geez, it's larger then the ***X WINDOW SOURCE ***

  • Mr. Flanagan is complaining that the the most standard-compliant browser is not compliant enough

    Dude, I hope you aren't suggesting that Mozilla or Netscape is the most standard-compliant browser. There is exactly one, and only one, fully CSS1-compliant browser in existence. That's Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 for the Macintosh. Even 5.5 for Windows isn't. And Netscape is such a joke... I build webpages to help pay for my tuition and if everyone used a standards-compliant browser such as IE5Mac I wouldn't have to worry about anything. Netscape is, has been, and will continue to be the bane of my professional existence.

    I look forward to the day that someone will offer me a browser that doesn't suck. MS is the closest thing I have so far.

    PS iCab is getting closer...

    MyopicProwls

  • lets face it, what really matters is how the damn thing works for the majority of people. meaning, most idiots care more about whether or not they can get a really cool skin for netscape 6 than whether or not one page out of 10,000 will crash the thing. the really picky ones might not like the fact that it doesnt load pages as fast (as compared to IE5, for now). if netscape is going to get back in the game, they have to appeal to a huge number of people, though, which means that they have to release a product that john-Q-public will like more than IE.

    personally, i think it would behoov them to fix those few bugs, even if it does push the launch date back a week or two. if for no other reason than to keep crititcs from lambasting them for releasing a product with known bugs (MS: "see, open source doesnt work"). i think the negative press that they might receive will more than counter the bonus of a faster release. its taken this long already, might as well dodge the criticism and wait another week or two.

  • If it's not obvious to people, Microsoft is currently conducting a FUD campaign against Mozilla/Netscape to spoil the launch and turn people away from it. This is why the press has been filled with IE 6.0 rumours and negative articles about NS 6.0. I'm not suggesting that the article authors are in cahoots with MS, but MS is bringing attention to the negative articles.

    Do yourselves a favour and try the NS 6.0 or Mozilla out for yourselves. It is very standards compliant, fast, open source and cross platform. If you don't like it then delete it. Unlike IE 5.5, Mozilla can be downloaded and installed in an hour without the need to reboot or replace half of your system DLLs to do it.

    And forget about IE 6.0 for a while. It's at least six months or more away from release.

  • Really?

    Well.. I know it's there, and i'm not ashamed of using it. But the main reason I support IE and not NN is because it supports the standards better.

    It's that same with alot of people I know, They use IE becasue they know it's a better browser.

    And when someone who isn;t computer literate asks, I tell them to use IE,

    It's got nothing to do with advertising. It's to do with that fact the people are getting sick using javascript and/or making 2 sites for differnt browsers.

    I'm a web designer, stuff like CSS is very usefull to me. I get excited when new this like this come out, and want to use them on web-pages. But I usaly never do, becasue my site won't come out in a certian browser. That's the problem, not advertising.

  • That's nice. But the point is that they're still not the same.
  • The same people who are saying that Netscape 6 shouldn't be released because it isn't standards compliant are the same people who just recently said that Netscape should've released an interim browser between 4.7x and 6.x that at least implemented some standards.

    These people who scream that Netscape isn't bug-free, then wail that it's taking too long to finish make me think of the old joke about the crotchety old woman in a deli: "Such horrible food...and in such small portions!"


    ---
    Zardoz has spoken!
  • I really hate it when people just keep stacking superlatives atop one another like that. They should be struck down by a boltBBRRZAAAPP!

  • That's just not true. (Score:3)

    by delay ( 134063 ) on Tuesday November 07, 2000 @09:01AM (#641966)
    I think that delaying Netscape a week or two to fix some bugs is really important. The delay would be a much lower price then bad press. The Guys who just say "Hey, why care about Netscape, we have Mozilla", just aren't right: Microsoft will start bitching and say: "Look at Netscape 6: It was released with a lot of known bugs, and that's the way it is with all Open-Source Software!". Managers will believe that, they don't know the difference between Netscape and Mozilla. And the whole community pays the price.
  • "Second, these aren't showstopper bugs; it isn't worth delaying Netscape another year for all the minor bugs that have been discovered. It hurts me to say this, but that's life with web browsers."


    Want a preview of some what should be considered a showstopper [soros.ath.cx] ? There are some very bright and motivated people interested in the problem. But it does show some very deep internal problems with the mozilla code. If IE can do this page in 90 secs and mozilla chugs along to make it in 900.. then something is seriously wrong. There are a few others that trouble me much ... They can be corrected, and will, but when ?

    My hat is off to the mozilla team, all its contributers and hackers alike, you've built a very solid browser, So Far.... now on to the 10% thats left. (well 15% :)
  • Just because the release of 6 has some bugs doesnt mean they shouldnt release it. Get it out there, let the bugs be identified, let users evalutate it, Im sure they will release fixes and patches to all these bugs later. I think some of these netscape critics havent worked in a tense business situation before. Deadlines are important and hell they have to make some money to compete against the monster macrohard.

  • Shortcuts (Score:3)

    by The Pim ( 140414 ) on Tuesday November 07, 2000 @09:48AM (#641969)
    Software companies have always taken shortcuts. One of the important engineering lessons of free software is that fewer shortcuts are taken when developers are in charge and the development (and release) process is open. This is a key to the quality of much free software. Jamie Zawinski, even after leaving Mozilla, has acknowledged [jwz.org] that "Netscape made better decisions as a result" of freeing the code.

    But it's a tough pill for a traditional software organizaton to swallow. The Netscape PDT probably understands the pressure from marketing and management to get the product out, better than they understand the pressure from programmers to get the product right. They are comfortable letting another little bug slip through (it can be patched later, right?), but the deadline is a big bad monster that cannot be allowed any slack.

    I think we need to make them uncomfortable. We need to make the PDT realize that technical issues--especially standards compliance--are not pawns. Mozilla and Netscape will be the better for it.

  • The anger about this issue is not just some loopy over-reaction by a bunch of nutcases. I'm an ex-web developer precisely because this keeps happening.

    It is worse, worse, FAR worse, to partially and imperfectly implement a technology than to leave it out altogether. CSS and the DOM are unusable because of the half-assed implementations by both Microsoft and Netscape. What's more developers won't be able to use them with confidence, and without agonising work-arounds (the if browser='Netscape6.0' kludges) until the last buggy implementation is out of circulation. How long will it be until the last of your audience stop using the current crop of browsers? Three years? Four? Five? However long it is, Netscape have just added another year or two for you. Thank you Netscape.

    This is in no way a minor issue, when the platforms you're writing for are so flaky that you can actually crash them using nothing but Style Sheets!

    Well, you may argue that Netscape had no option but to demonstrate it's utter contempt for it's users and developers yet again; the hard-headed realities of the marketplace made them do it. They had to release a browser before standards compliance was complete, therefore they had to release a browser that breaks the standands. No, here's the other option:

    Release Netscape 3.0. Throw in the some pretty themes, the irritating sidebars, the instant messaging, crappy mail client, crappier authoring tool, pile on the new bells and whistles to your hearts content and call it Netscape Everything Suite 6.0 Platinum Professional Millenium Edition. Who's gonna care that is doesn't even attempt to handle HTML4, CSS, or the DOM? Not most users. Not the "web designers" who create tables full of gifs in Dreamweaver.

    And here's the best part: people can put together sites that are standards compliant, confident that their content will be ready for future browsers that will implement the standards properly, and "degrade gracefully" in browsers that don't.

    In the meantime, we can encourage people to use Links [mff.cuni.cz]. It may not look too pretty, or support the latest standards, but at least it doesn't break them.

  • Aol did a good job of filling the Internet with more crappy users than "in the know" users. Maybe they can fill the Internet with more crappy browser users instead of IE users. (not that IE is any better)
  • Read some of the comments below the article. Particularly this one. [mozillazine.org] He plans to keep carrying news, just not criticism. I think he is more upset about who is criticising Netscape rather than the criticism itself. Note that he uses the term 'armchair marketers' or something like that.

  • This Netscape argument is a good example of the incompatabilities between Open Source projects and for-profit companies. OSS programmers are used to technically correct code, things like standards compliance (when applicable) and lack of bugs are often the most important goals of a project beyond just putting together something that satifies a purpose. People who market software for profit have to worry about keeping up with the competition by getting new features to customers as quickly as possible. A lot of times things have to ship with bugs. You see this everywhere, Red Hat is a poster child for it and they get ripped by a lot of old school developers.

    There isn't any reason why these goals have to remain incompatible. For OSS companies to compete with proprietary vendors they will have to come to some sort of compromise. It is amazing the problems people will put up with (daily crashes) just to get a little functionality (Windows). You can read a story a day about how some project, Open or Closed, has its deadlines moved around for one reason or another. Programmers everywhere end up shipping something that isn't as good as they would like it to be. It is just a tug of war between the people who know the code and the people who know the consumers.

  • I've read all I can get my hands on, and it seems as if the only things lacking are facts. Claims abound, but I have yet to see any real-world facts. Flannigan's original article listed about a dozen bugs which he claims will end the world, and the retorts claim that nobody will ever notice them. Perhaps someone here would care to give an impartial opinion?
  • With all the bitching about standards compliance flying around... are there any published compliance reports? It'd be nice to see how the different browsers really do stack up.

    I just downloaded the miz nightly - My first one in a few months, and I'm really impressed with how far they've come since then, but I'm not really competent to decide if it's 'standards compliant' or not. It brings up all my favorite sites just fine.
  • I had no problems just now copying my Inbox file from the applicable NS 4.61 (Linux) folder to the applicable folder on the 20001106 Mozilla nightly (Linux) and pulling up my old messages under the Mozilla newsreader. Of course, my Inbox was only about 70 messages, not a Gig.

    The recent post-M18 nightlies have been very good, both under Linux and Windows -- more or less useable full time (I am using it now). My only real complaint is that I haven't had much luck getting the Java plugin to run, though others have, so I guess I am missing something. I have found the non-Netscape Mozilla branch to be better than the Netscape branch.

    As others have pointed out:

    (i) Mozilla is much more than just a browser, but a client-server environment.

    (ii) Mozilla is more than just Netscape 6. In a year or two I would not be surprised if non-NS derivatives of Mozilla have more of an impact than Netscape 6.x itself (for instance, embedded in set-top boxes and other similar devices or used in Intranets or other closed loop systems (for instance, for B2B applications with limited registered user bases).

    I would really encourage everyone to give Mozilla a try and learn a little about what it has to offer. I do not think it is too far-fetched to say that Mozilla is the best defense against the Internet becoming primarily a medium for MSIE to communicate with various MS .net initiatives.

  • A few points

    First off I must admit I have never used a Netscape Pr release but my only Browser is Galeon/Mozilla from cvs

    I can understand the Netscape approach for one simple reason - the standard Moz builds still have loads of debugging code . So I can understand why Netscape would want to concentrate on optiization rather than iplementing every single fix.

    t was always going to be true that things that worked in NS4 were going to be broken in Mozilla becase Netscape is NOT standards compliant

  • That show stopper is taking IE 5.5 five minutes and counting. Not that I am proud to be using IE, but it is what I get at work. I don't count that as a bug against mozilla. Maybe a bug in the web page design. (BTW we have two t1's so it is not a bandwith issue into the building, maybe from the site.)
  • The Mozillazine rant makes no sense. David Flanagan says Netscape 6 should be as good as Mozilla's best, not compromised by marketers. Instead of realizing that Flanagan is supporting the efforts Mozilla has made, Mozillazine goes into Nixon enemies mode. And trashes the WaSP while they're at it. I intended to reply on Mozillazine, but it's down. Here's the WaSP reply [webstandards.org] to Mozillazine.

  • The same people who are saying that Netscape 6 shouldn't be released because it isn't standards compliant are the same people who just recently said that Netscape should've released an interim browser between 4.7x and 6.x that at least implemented some standards.
    Let's get it into perspective. The Web Standards people said that Netscape need to release something now because Mozilla's taking too long and soon the market share erosion will make it irrelevant. That's a good point, except that IE is Windows/Mac only and the rest of us would rather see a finished Mozilla than a half-arsed release. [webstandards.org]

    The complaints yesterday were about Netscape not including standards compliance bug fixes which are in Mozilla because NS6 is in the push to RTM (release to manufacturing). I don't think that criticism was entirely fair - NS have to draw the line somewhere or they'll be bug fixing for the next 3 years.

    My opinion of the project is that they shouldn't have tried to do everything at once. They should've finished the browser before starting the mail reader, then once that was done move onto the composer, and so on. I also don't agree with their decision to write their own UI toolkit, rather than just an abstraction layer on top of the existing toolkits. (Apparently it was the only way they could sell marketing/management on supporting anything other than Windows).

  • Criticizing criticism of criticism... (Score:3)

    by sulli ( 195030 ) on Tuesday November 07, 2000 @08:56AM (#641981) Journal
    No, they're just learning from Slashdot!
  • I think that since AOL bought Netscape, the Mozilla project isn't quite the same. Ok, the team is doing a great work, but since then the image of netscape became so attached to Mozilla, that any critcs related to Netscape are related to the project either.

    I have to say that Aol simply blew Netscape. An entrerprise like them simply should not have left a such promessing browser on their on. Other example is ICQ. Why did AOL bought it, if they still try to impose AOL Instant Messager?

    I still hope netscape 6 become a great success, and fight again against IE, but I have already tested it and its java, javascript and css implementation just sux.

  • Re:They have a point (Score:5)

    by g_mcbay ( 201099 ) on Tuesday November 07, 2000 @09:30AM (#641983)
    There's a lot of bugs to fix and features to create and only those programmers know what to do next.

    I think a big part of the problem many people have with Mozilla is not simply that it is buggy or non-standards-compliant.... Most people's problem is that it is buggy and non-standards-compliant seemingly at the expense of all sorts of questionable features, like the skinning interface, the built in chat features, etc.

    I understand the arguments about how you can't really heard Open Source developers into doing what you want them to, and most would rather work on glam features rather than dull bugs...But that's an issue that needs to be addressed in some way if Mozilla ever wants to compete again with IE. And it deserves to be criticized until that issue is addressed.

  • look, i've been a professional web developer for about 5 years now (ancient, true, but they haven't been able to force me into retirement yet .. these young whippersnappers don't know how good they've got it .. why, in my day, the only function of javascript was to generate errors, and we LIKED it! but i digress)

    see, i COULDN'T CARE LESS whether or not it conforms to a given set of standards. i just want the darn thing to work as i'd expect it to, which right now, i'm sorry, NS6 (and mozilla) are a LOOOONG way from doing. if they diverged from the standard, but did it smoothly and intelligently, then that would be JUST FINE. trust me, we web dev folks will FIGURE IT OUT. but unfortunately, NS conforms to the standards in a clunky and unwieldy way while IE continues to be just plain smarter.

    pezpunk
    Internet killed the video star,

  • I am using the current NS 6. I would like to see the bugs worked out before it get released. Crashing while scrolling through my email for instance. I would also like to see NS release the standards compliant browser they are promising. NS has never released a standards compliant browser, they allways throw in a bunch of propriatary garbage.

    Netscape chose to hold of and not release a 5.0 version of their browser because it wasn't good enough. Why not make sure the NS 6 is that they were promising?

  • that petition! (Score:3)

    by Pink Daisy ( 212796 ) on Tuesday November 07, 2000 @09:14AM (#641986) Homepage
    I was going to sign, but decided not to. Netscape 6 IS better... sure there are a few bugs, but I can see two very good reasons for releasing it as soon as possible.

    First, marketing. Every day they have that lousy 4.x browser, they suffer. Lots of people will upgrade to the latest released browser, but not nightly builds of Mozilla. Give them something that works, even if not perfectly, to build the brand instead of destroying it.

    Second, these aren't showstopper bugs; it isn't worth delaying Netscape another year for all the minor bugs that have been discovered. It hurts me to say this, but that's life with web browsers. What is worth doing is releasing bugfixes after the product is out. Kind of like Microsoft does for Internet Explorer.

    Isn't the credo for both dot com's and open source projects, "release early, release often"? Personally, I think they should have released as soon as it was better than Netscape 4.

  • Wow. Kuddo to your intrepid self!
    Do you also use Mozilla as your email client? Is it confortable or should I wait another few nightly builds before trashing my Gig or so of filed NS4.x emails?
  • Yes, I understand what a standard is. But the existence of a "standard' doesn't make it relevant. The fact that a browser is going to support some "standard" declared by somebody is less important to me than whether the browser a) exists and b) supports the de-facto standards and correctly renders the sites I read.
  • Like several people pointed out on Mozillazine, Mr. Flanagan is complaining that the the most standard-compliant browser is not compliant enough.

    Is there a moderately objective site that explains what browsers are and aren't compliant with what? I've read all the assertions here that Mozilla is "the most standards compliant". I've read that IE 5 on the Mac is the most compliant. iCab and Konqueror are touted as compliant. I'd be interested in seeing a thorough review.

    That said, who cares? I'm more familiar with what goes on under the hood of my broswer than the vast majority of users. I've filed Mozilla bug reports and I have a small patch in Konqueror. And I couldn't care less about a laundry list of standards compliance. My test for "compliance" is whether I can read the sites I want to read -- it makes no difference to me whether my browser supports an alphabet soup of acronyms I know nothing about.

  • I don't agree.

    By releasing Netscape 6 with major standards non-conformance, you're adding yet another platform that content developers have to make their sites compatible with. Then, when Netscape gets around to fixing things, it will be one more (the correct one though).
  • Just because the release of 6 has some bugs doesnt mean they shouldnt release it.

    After all, known bugs never stopped MS, did it?

    They released W:ME with, what was it, 63K known bugs? And who knows how many unknown ones.

    The dozen or so that Flanagan listed don't bother me quite as much...
  • we needed tensile infomediaries the transition, the Web-preparation of collaboration of the trade name and ocular globes of the connect-and-game of the target if Mozilla is always to reach its goal of the affluent execution in the robust tests patterns of the and-service that saying, would be interesting to see if the community of Mozilla can compete with Microsoft by the content without threads e-e-enabling of envisioneer of the initiatives of the company.
  • JEEZUS!!!!

    Um, try again dude. Within your first few words you have used more political sounding words than most of us use all day. Please, english or your native language (some of us can translate between languages). None of this mix-up stuff.


    Slow moving marsupials and the women that love them
  • web standards project.. i think.

  • Netscape/AOL as bad as Microsoft (Score:4)

    by Cap'n enigma ( 239593 ) on Tuesday November 07, 2000 @09:23AM (#642000)
    Check out this comment from LinuxToday.
    Evidently Netscape 6 comes with a utility that reports every file downloaded off the internet back to Netscape.

    <br>http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2 000-11-07-007-04-OP-CY-SW-0000

  • Well, I know what the problem is (Score:4)

    by potcrackpot ( 245556 ) on Tuesday November 07, 2000 @09:05AM (#642002) Homepage
    The problem with Netscape is that people are ashamed of using it, in contrast to those using Internet Explorer. When I'm in my local internet cafe, you can always identify those that are using it by their vocal cries of IEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! (as Internet Explorer crashes and reboots the PC).

    All Netscape needs is a proper advertising strategy so that everyone can be proud of using it. If version 6.0 goes ahead as planned, then they will be taking a step in the right direction.

  • The third option is to go for the least common denominator and that is forgetting about all those cool new ways of doing things simply because of the pain in the ass it is to write the code two or three times.

    If people would write for the least common denominator more often, instead of (a) rushing to embrace all those cool new ways of doing things or (b) writing the code two or three times, the world of computing would be a much better place.

  • Netscape, out of the loop? (Score:3)

    by TheGHz ( 252541 ) on Tuesday November 07, 2000 @10:18AM (#642005) Homepage
    While I won't pretend to know Netscape as well as I should to produce an accurate reply, let me pitch in my two cents anyway.

    If Netscape releases a browser that has major design flaws in relation to what it supports and how well it supports it then they might as well leave the release be.

    For years now, web developers has been forced to produce sites that supports two or more flavors of browsers in order to target the majority of the likely users of their sites.

    For e-commerce sites this is not really a choice. You can't say "Let's just support one browser because that's easiest", when that effectively blocks out a huge chunk of your potential customer base.

    Neither is it very likely that you can opt to support full DHTML support in two or more platforms simply because you need to write each page specifically for each browser.

    The third option is to go for the least common denominator and that is forgetting about all those cool new ways of doing things simply because of the pain in the ass it is to write the code two or three times.

    The most likely outcome if Netscape releases a sub-standard browser is that quite a few sites will stop paying the cost to support two browsers and go for one. If Netscape hopes the sites will go for Netscape then I think they will be hugely disappointed.

    IE has been out there, is working (well enough, bugs yes, but generally it works), and does not appear to be disappearing anytime soon.

    I think there comes a time when enough is enough. If Netscape can't see that that time is about to be passed in the near future then I'm not too sorry if their browser simply dies.

    If they release a kick-ass browser that is stable, supports the necessary standards (again, well enough), then it's a welcome addition.

    If however we need to make Pre-NS6 pages, IE pages, and Post-NS6 pages, then I'm afraid that we're flogging a loosing horse.

    <flame>For years now, Microsoft has been criticized for releasing software with huge amounts of bugs into the public.

    I guess this makes Netscape a Microsoft wannabe </flame>

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