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America Online Mozilla The Internet

Mozilla, Gecko, Netscape, And Their Future At AOL 256

Posted by chrisd from the fish-flopping-on-the-dock dept.
bluephone writes "I've been lucky enough to receive some interesting information from within the Netscape/AOLTW firewall, although in light of AOL's recent massive losses, poor outlook, and high profile execs resigning their positions, I'm not sure if these battle plans are still intact. As it stands, Netscape 7.x has one major release left for the forseeable future, but Gecko will soon overshadow everything, becoming the core platform for all of AOL's Internet content distribution. For all the details and much more, read it here."
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Mozilla, Gecko, Netscape, And Their Future At AOL More

Mozilla, Gecko, Netscape, And Their Future At AOL

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  • Only good news (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Zelet ( 515452 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:10PM (#5292425) Journal
    It will finally force web authors to support standards not monopolies.

    • Re:Only good news (Score:4, Interesting)

      by khold ( 164649 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:16PM (#5292464)
      Yeah, you have an excellent point there. If AOL shifts over to Gecko use, websites will be urged to move away from proprietary bullshit Internet Explorer HTML, and back over to the "real" HTML 4.0 standard. But wait, I just realized that in order for websites to make themselves more compliant, they have to actually hire a web designer with talent instead of using MS FrontPage and the lovely HTML it produces.

      • Re:Only good news (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MattCohn.com ( 555899 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:27PM (#5292512)
        Don't kill frontpage just yet. I disabled all it's automatic code cleaning, insearting id=autonumber shit into tables, and use it soley for three purposes.

        One, to make tables quickly, I then re-enter the html and tweek it the way I want... but it's easier seeing everything in front of you then having to mentally map td to possision. I know, not much but it is.

        Second, color coding. Forgot a "? Color coding makes writing my HTML so much simpler.

        And the final use is writing my external style sheets. I like not having to memorize an entirly diffrent set of data-value pairs for CSS, and it produces compleatly complient and simple CSS pages.

        I also enjoy having all my pages tabbed, and being able to quickly switch between HTML and preview modes on the fly.

        My HTML is clean, well-formatted, tabbed (each and every thing), uses scripts to pull a header, dynamic body, and footer on the fly for requests, and uses NO formatting, absolutly EVERYTHING is done through external style sheets which can be selected by the user with ?style=cssname. Also, 100% HTML 4.01 Transitional and CSS complient.

        I use FrontPage. I write good HTML. Get over yourselves.

        • Re:Only good news (Score:4, Interesting)

          by llamaluvr ( 575102 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:15PM (#5292705) Journal
          Crimson Editor [crimsoneditor.com] color-codes HTML, too. It doesn't do that other stuff, but it's quite a bit cheaper.

          Of course, I'm not really the type to edit HTML in a text editor much, either. Lately, I've been relying on Visual Studio .NET (I'm sure I'll get modded down for saying that) for my editing, since it does color-coding, automatic end-tab completion, automatic spacing, grouping of different pages in the same project space, and so I can see the webpage in progress.

          Unfortunately, it's made me very lazy with my HTMLing. With all the stuff it does for me, I'm not to confident in my ability to write neat and good HTML without it's help. But it does make my work go a lot faster...
          • It is my sincere hope that you do NOT get modded down and instead, modded up.

            Of course, I'm not really the type to edit HTML in a text editor much, either. Lately, I've been relying on Visual Studio .NET (I'm sure I'll get modded down for saying that) for my editing, since it does color-coding, automatic end-tab completion, automatic spacing, grouping of different pages in the same project space, and so I can see the webpage in progress.

            Personally, I'm not a very big fan of anything with .NET in its title but I won't fault you for using the tool that works best for you.

            Unfortunately, it's made me very lazy with my HTMLing. With all the stuff it does for me, I'm not to confident in my ability to write neat and good HTML without it's help.

            This is why I hope your post gets modded up instead of down. Your honesty and objectivity is refreshing.

            But it does make my work go a lot faster...

            Perhaps, but have you considered all of the implications? What if there's a bug that causes your WYSIWYG to render web pages incorrectly? What if the next patch for your WYSIWYG introduces a bug? What if the webpage generated by your WYSIWYG application is coded so that only the browser created by the owner of your WYSIWYG app can view your webpages?

            I maintain my website on the company intranet with vi and the only thing that takes up my time is recreating tables from a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, because if I try to use their "Save as Web Page" option...all I get is bloated XML.

            --K.

          • Re:Only good news (Score:3, Insightful)

            by WowTIP ( 112922 )
            And what about Macromedia Dreamweaver [macromedia.com]? I always preferred Dreamweaver to frontpage back when I was writing HTML.

            Haven't used either for a while though, the scales might be tipping in favour of Frontpage.

            • Re:Only good news (Score:3, Informative)

              by Bedouin X ( 254404 )
              No... they aren't. Dreamweaver MX is light years ahead of Frontpage XP.

              - SSH Support (though I have heard that a few people are having problems with it)
              - Code support (syntax highlighting and auto-completion as well as code generation - which should always be used with caution) for ASP, ASP.Net, ColdFusion, JSP, PHP
              - Ability to generate valid XHTML
              - Advanced page templates and database objects

              That's only to name a few Dreamweaver advantages. Though Frontpage definitely displays CSS2 layouts better in it's visual editor, something that I hope tha embedding of Opera may fix (but I doubt).

        • YOU do... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Eric_Cartman_South_P ( 594330 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:26PM (#5292753)
          I use FrontPage. I write good HTML. Get over yourselves.

          YOU do... and that's great. Actually a very valid point you have. The problem is will little tiny companies such as, oh, CITIBANK that have a "few" customers! What is a shame is the fact that they have to use IE to bank. I've tried Citibank for Business online, and Safari fails. KDE fails. Mozilla works, but only with the prefs bar plugin to change the id string to IE on WinXP. Otherwise Citibank fails. The problem is not the sites you design, but the corporate sites that millions of people would like to use to shop, bank, etc to make their lives a little easier. And needing IE to use these sites makes life easier, but a lot less secure.

          I've had e-mail exchanged with Citibank on this topic, and they only test for IE and, to quote, "most of the time Netscape too". MOST OF THE TIME? Great.

          If 32,000,000+ people are using Gecho engine (assuming AOL makes the switch), this will be great because it could very well force companies to do what you do! USe their frontpage but with the propper settings so HTML is clean and pure and written as per the standards. This can only be DoublePlusGood(TM) for IE, Netscape, Gecho, Moz, KDE, Safari et. al.

          • Re:YOU do... (Score:3, Interesting)

            by DrXym ( 126579 )
            Well banking is perhaps a seperate issue, but any e-store that feels it is not worth gaining 5-10% customers simply by fixing their damned pages is either:
            1. Making too much money to care, so clearly they can't offering that much value to begin with.
            2. Being run so badly that 5-10% potential profits is slipping through their fingers. They could go under any minute!


            Either way, there are plenty of other stores to choose from.


            I do feel your pain however about banks. My own bank steadfastly refuses to update their site to work on anything but IE and only on the PC you first registered thanks to some file it deposits there. Frankly it's a ludicrous situation especially as the service is called "Anytime". Apparantly to them Anytime, means "any time you're in front of the one machine running IE (including Java) which you registered on, but go to hell if you're a Mac or Linux user, or a Mozilla / Opera / Safari user, or sat in an Internet cafe or at another machine desperately trying to transfer funds from your own account".

        • Re:Only good news (Score:4, Informative)

          by accessdeniednsp ( 536678 ) <detoler@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:45PM (#5292834)
          Glad to see you not succumbing entirely to the Borg. However, check out Bluefish [openoffice.nl] sometime. It does a lot of what you mentioned with the other obvious side-effects (gpl, gtk1 and gtk2 ports, etc.) Dunno if there is work to port it to win32.
        • UltraEdit has colour coding, and can generate HTML tables on the fly. And it's not hard to learn CSS off by heart.
        • Defending FrontPage (a truly horrible pile of dogshite):
          Second, color coding. Forgot a "? Color coding makes writing my HTML so much simpler.

          You don't put colour (or formatting) information in HTML. You put it in your stylesheet.

          I use FrontPage. I write good HTML.

          Impossible. I have, in the course of my job, done a technical evaluation of each successive version of FrontPage. None have been capable of generating valid HTML.

    • Re:Only good news (Score:5, Funny)

      by Bob The Cowboy ( 308954 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:36PM (#5292542)
      It will finally force web authors to support standards not monopolies.

      Yes, Lord knows the poor people at AOL are just good honest folk trying to get their foot in the door...

      ;o)
      • Well in this matter AOL are being pretty honest. AOL sells content - news, films, magazines etc. and frankly they don't care how you get it as long as you can get it. Therefore standards as far they are concerned is a Good Thing since they can deliver their content in a way that reaches as many people as possible - Windows, Mac, Linux, settop boxes, phones, wherever.


        What they don't want is Microsoft or anyone else controlling the delivery format for obvious reasons - it's as good an idea as allowing a mental patient to shave your privates with a razor.

    • Re:Only good news (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Dracos ( 107777 )

      Not necessarily. Many web designers today know very little HTML, because they're relied on tools like Dreamweaver to write it for them...and Dreamwaver outputs junk most of the time (not to mention their javascript output still attempts to be functional in 3.x browsers). When Macromedia and the other web dev vendors produce tools that churn out W3C validated content by default (I read an article recently on how to get DW to output XHTML, and I laughed), then I'll start using one. AOL should pay Macromedia to make Gecko the rendering engine in DW, instead of IE.

  • Not car insurance. (Score:5, Funny)

    by rammadon ( 305230 ) <bkarker1@@@binghamton...edu> on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:13PM (#5292440)
    Gecko will save you 30% or more on Internet browsers... wait... Did i get that wrong?

    Good deal, AOL is doomed for one reason- people learned how to use the internet. It was the intermediary, but no longer with the advent of popular broadband.
    • Oh, great. A posting gecko.

  • They've threatened it before (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sould ( 301844 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:13PM (#5292443) Homepage
    Every now & again we get another "leaked" memo/whatever from AOL hinting that they're going to drop IE.

    And every time, AOL are just about to go into negotiation with Microsoft & want a bargaining chip to reduce licensing costs.

    • Re:They've threatened it before (Score:5, Interesting)

      by $$$$$exyGal ( 638164 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:49PM (#5292606) Homepage Journal
      What we're seeing with Web sites that are viewable only with IE is the privatization of the Web, and that's a dangerous setting.

      Are there really that many web sites out there that are viewable only with IE? I rarely come across any, anymore.

      --sex [slashdot.org]

      • Re:They've threatened it before (Score:4, Interesting)

        by LX.onesizebigger ( 323649 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:57PM (#5292633) Homepage
        One of the few important ones, at least for Windows users, is the windowsupdate site. They do provide an alternative for other browsers, but that means manual downloads, no automated check as to what patches you already have installed. The bank that I use also appear not to allow Phoenix in. :(
        • Windowsupdate is one of the few sites where I don't care if it doesn't work on non-IE browsers. It's not like you're going to be running the site on a non-Windows platform, at least you're not going to be running the automated scans on a non-Windows platform.

          Unfortunatly, I do still run into some sites that don't work in anything but IE. Usually it's a matter of a menu not appearing or some text shifted underneath an image. More often it's a piece of Javascript that doesn't work correctly in anything but IE but is required for navigation. This gets worse when you set Mozilla to block popups and obnoxious behavior (resizing windows, etc...). It's very annoying when the site in question is for your bank or work and you're not running Windows, but usually one can get around problems like that (view source is your friend).

          Some sites are even worse. Screenblast [screenblast.com] doesn't work correctly unless you have IE 5 and WMP 8 (IIRC) installed (it refused to run even with WMP9 or IE6!)[1].

          [1] Note that last time I tried was a couple of months ago and I'm back on my FreeBSD machine at the moment and cannot test to see if they've fixed their broken site.
          • at work we have a d-link di 614+ router that is someday going to alow all of our networked 'puters to use the cable modem. The funny thing is that the web interface has some javascript issues with IE and opera on win32 that don't exist on my linux machine. Yes it works with moz and galeon, and opera and even khtml under linux but says its broken under windows.
        • I have netscape 6.something (one of those that netscape released before Mozilla was at 1.0) under win2k on my laptop. Hotmail gave me a connection refused error when my wife tried to use it to access her hotmail account the other day. Netscape 4.7 under Linux works just fine with hotmail. In this case, since netscape 6 was so buggy anyway, I am inclined to give hotmail the benefit of the doubt. But still, any program remotely pretending to be anything close to a browser should be able to at least fetch the html that a site serves up even if it can't render it exactly the way the page designer expected.
          • Maybe there was a temporary problem at hotmail, or perhaps your isp`s proxy was down (the browser will return a connection refused error as if the remote site had refused connection, even tho its the proxy it couldnt connect to)
      • Actually there are quite a few. Off the top of my head, try going here [mazdausa.com] and here [jaguar.com]. These sites deliberately keep you out if you're using anything other than IE. I assume you've heard of these cars?

      • "Are there really that many web sites out there that are viewable only with IE? I rarely come across any, anymore."

        Yes. All the ones on our intranet. Mozilla doesn't support NTLM authentication.
      • Are there really that many web sites out there that are viewable only with IE? I rarely come across any, anymore.

        Yeah, ever since i switched to IE, i never come across any!

      • Re:They've threatened it before (Score:5, Informative)

        by Reziac ( 43301 ) on Thursday February 13, 2003 @11:46AM (#5295053) Homepage Journal
        Earthlink's new Webmail requires IE6's incarnation of javascript. As a result, it does not work in Netscape 4.7x (the most prominent *installed* NS userbase). It only sorta works in NS4.80 and Mozilla. -- This caused much screaming in the earthlink.complaints newsgroup, to no avail.

        I'm told by a Bank of America customer that BofA's site requires IE to manage your bank account. I've heard that this is the case also for some other banks (someone hereabouts mentioned CitiBank). Irony: banks requiring use of IE for "security reasons"!!

        Verizon and SoCalEdison sites were evidently only tested with IE; account management doesn't work in any version of NS or Mozilla that I tried. (For a longer rant on the subject, see 7.15.02 entry on http://home.earthlink.net/~rividh/asylum/wartime.h tm -- beware the slashdot space.)

        One problem I've seen is that frequently complaints about a website are seen ONLY by the webmaster -- who may well ignore any complaints that he doesn't feel like addressing. Hence when it's a seriously big deal, I now copy any complaints to sales, investor relations, and any other prominently "this involves money" mailtos I can locate.

        [rant] It's considered good marketing wisdom that a meatspace store must ensure that no more than 5% of potential customers cannot readily use the store. Yet these same companies don't see any problem with their online presence being inaccessable to anywhere from 20% to 80% of potential customers, depending on which browsers their site excludes. What's wrong with this picture?? [/rant]

        (I wrote this yesterday, but a glitch ate it before it could get posted. Hope I remembered everything on the rebound. :)

    • The difference now is that Microsoft is gunning for AOL's core market. Microsoft has shown again and again they don't like to coexist with anyone. They don't always suceed in dominating (Xbox), but AOL can't be too happy about them trying. Right now AOL has a lot of leverage because of it's large subscriber base. If AOL didn't work well with Windows, people might well try another platform (more likely Mac than linux, unfortunately)

      The real interesting thing will be seeing if the Wintel monopoly can survive PS2s with internet access and cheap Linux PCs. Especially the PS2s. After all, to the basic end user, a linux PC is nothing more than a $300+ (after Monitor) Wordprocessor/internet appliance (few games, limited multimedia support, still no legal dvd player). The PS2 has the potential to do everything a Wintel PC does, and for $200 bucks.

  • AOL deserve what they get. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wackybrit ( 321117 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:14PM (#5292444) Homepage Journal
    I, for one, am grateful that the Mozilla project has remained somewhat separate from AOL. Sure, it's got some high profile Netscape people working on it, but in a traditional business sense it's not connected to AOL at all.

    AOL are up to numerous shenanigans right now. They're banning legitimate e-mail from TONS of servers. Their support for side projects is waning. Subscribers are leaving. It's a mass exodus, and all because they won't get with the times.

    I have clients who haven't been getting enquiries from their Web site, simply because a whole batch of Web host IPs got banned from sending mail to AOL.

    I used to be semi-pro AOL. I knew most Internet geeks didn't like their service, but I recommended them to newbies, since they do have a good 'get running quickly' service that's easy to understand. No more. My clients complain they receive TONS of spam now, despite AOL's OTT screening and banning.

    AOL is getting everything it deserves. Let's hope this sealed off network dies a death. Even Bill Gates had the insight to ditch his plans to have MSN as a sealed off network. It's time for AOL to do the same.

    Mozilla will live on regardless.
    • The question remains though, did AOL get everything they deserved because of providing an easy to use service and not moving with the times, or providing an easy to use service and not feeling the need to be moving with the times? i.e not recognising the need to

      How does a company recognise the time when the general populace becomes au fait with its product, when does the populace not need hand holding any more and instead needs something more significant, more sophisticated? It must be a very hard thing to judge, something that Microsoft will need to take into account, indeed something that every technology based company will need to address

      • Re:AOL deserve what they get. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Ian Bicking ( 980 ) <ianb@colPASCALorstudy.com minus language> on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:33PM (#5292780) Homepage
        when does the populace not need hand holding any more and instead needs something more significant, more sophisticated?
        The alternative to AOL isn't more sophisticated, it's less. Increasingly the only thing people need from an ISP is an internet connection, which is far less sophisticated than what AOL provides. It's not that AOL didn't grow with the times, AOL is just becoming insignificant. Maybe they could have found an alternative model, but you can't blame them for not doing so, no one else has either.

        AOL's competitors are essentially utility companies. There's no way to create a value added service for my electrical supply, and connectivity is getting to be the same way. AOL is coming from a time when you didn't just buy the electricity, but the service included all your electrical appliances as well.

    • Re:AOL deserve what they get. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Pharmboy ( 216950 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:18PM (#5292713) Journal
      AOL is getting everything it deserves. Let's hope this sealed off network dies a death.

      I used to be semi-pro AOL. I knew most Internet geeks didn't like their service, but I recommended them to newbies, since they do have a good 'get running quickly' service that's easy to understand. No more. My clients complain they receive TONS of spam now, despite AOL's OTT screening and banning.

      I'm lost here. Granted, I think AOL sucks. I wouldn't use it. But no one (including anyone in Soviet Russia) is forced to use it. Yet, millions do (not as many as last month, but still millions). My mother uses it, and frankly, I set her up with it so she wouldn't bug me to death asking questions.

      It's called "free market". AOL adds value to many people. To me and you, no, its not worth the price, but it obviously is to alot of people.

      A "sealed off network", as you call it, is just the same internet (albeit at crappys speeds) and lots of unique content. I am not convinced that is a bad thing.

      You talk about them banning email servers for spam, then bitch that they get tons of spam. You can't have it both ways. I can no longer send email from my own servers on a SDSL line, because a "free open list" that is commonly used, lists all SDSL ip ranges. My servers never sent more than 10 emails a day. Oh, and AOL accepts mail from my servers.

      You seem to have a lot of anger toward them, but your logic doesn't make sense. It seems to just be a rant against "closed systems".

      As to being "semi-pro AOL", I have no freaking idea what the hell that is. Is that like "an experienced newbie"?

  • Oh god no... (Score:5, Funny)

    by damiam ( 409504 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:15PM (#5292450)
    Why not deal a 1-2 punch to Microsoft in the form of a Netscape branded ISP

    So now, if someone says their ISP is "Netscape", you're not sure if they're clueless or really telling the truth.

  • The lesser of two evils? (Score:5, Funny)

    by TopShelf ( 92521 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:15PM (#5292456) Homepage Journal
    Who'da thunk that AOL would become a heavyweight in the battle for standardization on the internet against Microsoft? Strange days indeed!
    • I am gaining more respect for AOL, first they are mum about the RIAA's plan to make your base (and identity) belong to them. And now this. I would never subscribe to them, but they rate above the RIAA and MS in my eyes

  • Growing up? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mbredden ( 641756 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:19PM (#5292472)
    First up is some Netscape 7.x news. Netscape 7.0 and 7.01 have had a total of over 14 million downloads. To quote an AOL exec, this fact is "impressive compared to AOL 8's 10 million downloads which were backed by AOL's marketing muscle."
    Proof the AOL community is coming of age and realizing that AOL != the internet...?

    • Re:Growing up? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by NullProg ( 70833 )
      Proof the AOL community is coming of age and realizing that AOL != the internet...?

      I doubt it. More than likely it is the 14 million mozilla users downloading Netscape 7x just to get the email dictionary. After installing it they just delete the software. Besides myself, I know several mozilla users who did this.

      Enjoy,
    • First up is some Netscape 7.x news. Netscape 7.0 and 7.01 have had a total of over 14 million downloads. To quote an AOL exec, this fact is "impressive compared to AOL 8's 10 million downloads which were backed by AOL's marketing muscle."

      Proof the AOL community is coming of age and realizing that AOL != the internet...?

      ...or is it that 10 million of those Netscape downloads were webmasters who wanted to check if their site ran on the new version? ;-)

  • Every time I see an AOL commercial on TV, I think "man, their advertising department needs to be shot."

    If I wasn't so entrenched in my current e-mail, I'd consdier getting AOL on top of my RoadRunner account. For the same price as RR, I'd get a whole slew of content et al that isn't out on the web at large.

    I remember how AOL used to be, back in the days before my parents bailed and got a local ISP. It was fast, volomious, and the "custom AOL" bits were far slicker than anything i've seen before or since.

    Forget about the ISP bit--let the market have that crowd. AOL should go after folks who have an internet connection, by promoting what they can do that the rest of the 'net can't.

    If their only pitch is that they're easy to use, then they're going to get taken off just like any other set of training wheels.

    • Time to change your sig (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      How about "YES, I'm a Slashdot reader... and an AOL user."
    • It's dangerous to have ISP's with specialized content that only people who connect to that iSP can access. It could theoritically lead to the fragmantaion of the Internet, where you can only go to 15 - 20% of the content of the Internet due to the fact that the rest would be blocked off cause you don't connect to the other ISPs.

      • Why is that dangerous? I call it added value service. If you want it, you pay for it. It's like saying WSJ or Time should publish all their articles online for free because otherwise it's "fragmenting" the net into people who pay for the service and people who don't. That's silly. If companies are going to get any benefit from publishing online, they're going to have to provide paid content that non-paying users can't access. So you can't access AOL forums because you don't dial in through AOL? So pay $5 per month for their access-AOL-from-another-ISP service (yes it does exist).

      • And why would that be a bad thing?

        Having a "members only" part of the 'net is hardly a new idea, and it certainly won't cause the extant public net to suddenly go away.

        Truth be told, pay-for-access 'nets are the best answer anyone's thought of for micropayments.

        If you could buy anything that Time Warner produced, electronically, for a nominal fee, but you had have an AOL account--well, this being /. you probably wouldn't, but I'm sure you could see the reason why someone would.

    • Re:AOL should sell utility, not ease of use (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:13PM (#5292694) Homepage
      AOL used to be great, back before the internet was big. But when AOL's popularity boomed, so did the number of busy signals. AOL got too big too fast. They also tried to be the internet, and all things to all people. They bought up Sierra's Imagination Network (which was awesome) and ruined it. Many of the keywords that used to lead to nice parts of AOL or a companies content on AOL started opening a web browser to a web site. And the entire time, the internet access through AOL was ssssllllllooooowwwwwwwwww.

      For all the complaining about AOL I do (along with many other /.ers) it was quite nice. AOL could become very great again, and it wouldn't take too much. Here is a list of things:

      • Lower the price - This is a no brainer. They charge up to $5 more than most other dialup ISPs. What does that pay for, exclusive content? What exclusive content?
      • Speed it up - AOL's connection to the internet is pitifilly show compared to other ISPs. You just can't play games (quake, warcraft, etc) on AOL because of the ping times. This is definatly a deal breaker
      • Exclusive content - They need to get it back. AOL used to have alot of great stuff. Also, they supervised it all so it was consistant. It wasn't confusing and impossible to navigate like many internet sites are now. You couldn't access porn without trying. Compare that to the internet at large, where one wrong keystroke gets you endless windows of "3 year old does donkey that was set on fire all on the wing of a 747 crashing into an iceburg while BSDM lesbians...." junk. AOL was actually quite safe.
      • E-Mail - They got famous for this, and their little soundbite. My parrents are both addicted to AOL for their e-mail, but hate all the spam they get. They can't understand it. What would happen if AOL ran all their e-mail through SpamAssassin first? If spammers couldn't hit the 12 billion AOL users, I bet spam would drop a large amount for the 'net at large.
      • Teach - They would really help themselves by not being so idiot-o-centric. If they tought people things about the 'net, or at least didn't make non-AOL things so hard to do, they wouldn't lose as many subscribers. When you want to get on the internet, you get AOL. When you realize that AOL isn't the internet, you get a real ISP. I can't stand people asking me their screen name (meaning e-mail address), or "how do I install yahoo?" because they don't know it's a website and what they want to do is set it as their homepage.

      If AOL was just an ISP that had nice content like they used to ontop of everything else, I would go back to them. The monthly fee wouldn't be so outrageous if I couldn't get the same thing everywhere else for $15. If they could actually block most all of the spam I get, I'd go back. The biggest thing that they need to do, IMHO is this:

      Dump the client software!

      I use one program for web surfing (IE/Mozilla, etc), one for E-Mail (outlook, eudora, etc), one for newsgroups, why not one for AOL only content? You'd dial up AOl just like Earthlink or anyone else, and use that software to access their content. Don't force people to load up that memory and CPU hog just to look at Yahoo! Make it launch whenever someone access a URL like aol://whatever from a web browser, just like what happens when you click a mailto: or a nntp://alt.blah link in your web browser. A little reform would go a long way. Oh yeah, one other thing...

      Stop sending me CDs. Not in the mail, not in magazines, not in other software (winamp, etc).

      You don't have to blanket the world in CDs and cover TV with ads and try to install your software 20 times a week on my PC to get your message across.

      • Yes, the client software is a major killer... I know a lot of people who ditched aol and went with a local isp because they wanted to try linux, and i know furthur people who didnt try linux because they couldnt get it connected to their parents aol account.
    • Every time I see an AOL commercial on TV, I think "man, their advertising department needs to be shot."

      Hey, not just AOL:

      "By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself. No, this is not a joke: kill yourself . . . I know what the marketing people are thinking now too: 'Oh. He's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market.' Oh man, I am not doing that, you fucking evil scumbags."

      -- Bill Hicks

      (lifted from http://www.disinfo.com/pages/dossier/id1025/pg1/ [disinfo.com])

  • Interesting read... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by esconsult1 ( 203878 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:37PM (#5292556) Homepage Journal
    But in another few years AOL will be dead. Why? Their closed off network, broadband, and increasingly irrelevant content. The Verizon, and SBC et-al of the world are dishing out broadband to everyone who has a telephone and can affort it.

    Why purchase AOL on top of $40 per month (or more) of broadband services? What compelling services does AOL have to offer, besides E-mail and chat?

    Many years ago when I was fixing computers for a living as a traveling repairman, I recommended AOL to my newbie customers. Today newbie customers sneer at me if I do so. So I tend to tell them to get the local (Verizon, Cablevision) broadband services instead.

    But I digress... Gecko is a good thing, and I have all my friends/customers install Mozilla or Phoenix as their default browsers on Winblows PC's, but as AOL becomes geometrically, increasingly, irrelevant, I dont see much hope for them advancing the cause of Gecko.

  • I was with him... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by drdanny_orig ( 585847 )
    ...right up until the end. But I just can't root for AOL, I'm sorry.

  • AOL-Time-Warner the "good guys"? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by NineNine ( 235196 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:45PM (#5292591)
    Somehow, I don't see the largest media conglomerate in the world in a positive light. A uniform platform to work on is one thing, but uniform music/movies/TV is truly scary. If they had their way, there'd be one source of "news" and "entertainment": them. Fuck 'em.
    • True, but without them there would be No Mozilla and Windows users would be stuck with IE and Linux users would just be screwed period. You think linux has hard time proving its worthy of desktop use now? Imagine being stuck with a payware/adware browser(Opera 6) a browser that up till now could only be used for very simple web surfing(Konq) and a browser that's hopelessly out of date(Netscape 4).

      Regarding AOL/TW having "their way" I would put that same charge to ANY company. I don't see a reason to single them out over any of the shitty companies out there. They're all equally crappy. At least AOL/TW gave use Gecko and made decent web surfing on linux possible. I don't know of any other big media firms sponsoring such important opensource projects.

  • 14 million downloads (Score:4, Insightful)

    by NineNine ( 235196 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:48PM (#5292602)
    First up is some Netscape 7.x news. Netscape 7.0 and 7.01 have had a total of over 14 million downloads. To quote an AOL exec, this fact is "impressive compared to AOL 8's 10 million downloads which were backed by AOL's marketing muscle

    10 million AOL downloads = 10,000,000 * $20+/month.

    14 million Netscape downloads = $0.

    I still don't understand what they have to gain from Netscape. There's absolutely zero money to be made in the browser market. Seems like yet another boondoggle for a large, lumbering media giant that just absorbs everything in it's path. But then again, what's a few million dollar loss in the Netscape division to AOL/Time/Warner? A tax writeoff.

    • Re:14 million downloads (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sgtsanity ( 568914 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:24PM (#5292738)

      They gain MS insurance, in addition to having the chance to be the first famous ISP with linux software. Heck, they could probably make an entire "AOL operating system" disribution running on Linux as a backend, AOL graphical front-end, with Mozilla as an integral part.

      After all, why waste the other 500+ megs of space on AOL cds?

    • Re:14 million downloads (Score:2, Insightful)

      by mlk ( 18543 )
      "Free" developers, and a "free" rendering engine.

      I would guess that AOL pays MS $$$ for the use of MSIE in AOL. Now they don't have to.
    • Call me crazy, but I believe it has more to do with the portal influence. How many clueless MSN users actually change their homepage? Content control (that should be in quotes) is what its all about. Eyeballs on your ads, and the crap you post as news, leads to links to purchase stuff that most likely gets the browser/isp a kickback.

      Just a theory.

      Posted with NetPositive! Safari should be this fast...

    • Yea that does seem a bit strange..

      We were able to give away 14 million items for free, which is impressive when you compare it to these other items which sell for 20 bucks a month. We were able to only get rid of 10 million of those. I love people who can put such a nice spin on things like that =)

  • AOL/TWC is all about failed integrations (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    First AOL dumps a wad buying Netscape. They never even bothered to integrate it into their own software. WTF is that?? Then the AOL Time Warner merger comes along. Again no integration at all. Why wasn't AOL integrated into Road Runner long ago? I mean damn. RR should have been like, "thanks for signing up with Road Runner, here is your AOL username, password, and software so you can look at our ads and services all day." How freaking MBA do you have to be to figure that out? My guess is that both of these ridiculously stupid company purchases were done to make stock options become more or less valuable for trading purposes.

  • See you AOL... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:52PM (#5292617)
    ...at http://www.fuckedcompany.com

    R.I.P.

    May your faults be a lesson..

  • Another view from inside. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:55PM (#5292622)
    I was a victim of the mentioned "Black Wednesday" and from the view I got from the inside, forward thinking like this is quickly brought down, and back in line with the corporate philosophy that "we can do no wrong". I don't know how many times I worked hard to make a positive change within the company just to end up suffering for it, ultimately losing my job. (Posted AC for obvious reasons)
  • I can't wait till they die. Or at least sell off their "non-core assets" as they split apart.

    AOL took a look at the Braves (which they now own, along with the Atlanta Hawks and Thrashers), and decided that what the Series contender needed was:
    A) to trade Kevin Millwood, best pitcher in the NL last year, to the Phillies for basically nothing in return.
    B) let Cy Young winner Tom Glavine go to the Mets (both divison rivals, to boot)
    and of course C) raise ticket prices.

    We here in Atlanta are glad to reap the benefits of AOL's committment to quality. Paging Ted Turner.......

  • That's not the real question (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Bendebecker ( 633126 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:04PM (#5292660) Journal
    The real question is: does AOL have a future?
    • The real question is: does AOL have a future?
      Several years ago, AOL was the last to offer real internet access, before they had flat rate pricing (remember the $150 a month horror stories?). They had the slowest access, busy signals, and seemed very "old fashioned". Granted, they had amassed a couple million customers, and it had no where to go but down.

      I would have bet the farm that AOL was dead. After all, I could get internet access from my local ISP (who isnt in business anymore) for a decent flat price. And now the world was going to open up, and be dominated by independent ISPs. Then they changed their network, their pricing, their marketing, and all the rules in general.

      I don't care for AOL, but they have proved that they can adapt like a freaking borg. I wouldn't count them out quite yet.

  • Mozilla 1.3b is out (Score:2, Informative)

    by cowsurfer ( 461893 )
    Not exactly on topic, but Mozilla 1.3b is out. I don't think anyone has pointed that out yet... but don't shoot me if I'm wrong!

    Some new stuff, including image "auto-sizing" which is kinda nifty.

  • Here is my idea for AOL... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sophrosyne ( 630428 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:25PM (#5292747) Homepage
    ...Kill Netscape, make Mozilla the only browser you offer.
    Take Mozilla, and separate the Mail, Composer, and Instant messaging aspects of the program and build them into separate downloads...get rid of all the other bloat..
    Kill ICQ and AIM, and come up with one Instant messenger, that uses both ICQ numbers and AIM nicknames.
    ...try to make products with a purpose, not just because you have programmers and have to keep them busy.
    ...and lastly try to be profitable. :)

  • So what? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Dr. Mu ( 603661 )
    There was a time in the not too-distant past when this might have mattered. "AOL's adoption of Netscape and Gecko will force websites to comply ... blah, blah, blah." But it's hard for me to believe now, that in their weakened state, AOL carries more than a faint wisp of the influence they might have wielded. How many balls can you drop before the audience yawns and goes home?

  • Why not just use MS Word + http (Score:3, Insightful)

    by t482 ( 193197 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @11:47PM (#5293101) Homepage
    Wouldn't web design be so much easier if everyone just used Word? Forms, macros, print preview.

    This is what I tell people who design only for IE.

    Who cares about standards? Obviously idiots don't.

  • AOL Analyst (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @11:56PM (#5293123) Journal
    I think the biggest problem AOL faces right now is conservatism. They're big, so they have alot to lose, so they "play it safe".

    Yet if they don't bet the farm on something meaningful pretty much right away, there won't be a farm to bet.

    Yes, they'd be hideously stupid not to sell a "baby AOL" branded thru Lindows/Mandrake and Wal-mart. They could/should also provide a similar, rebrandable offering through computer shops and other vendors, not just Wal-mart! I know that alot of vendors would start selling it immediately if they could get a buck or two per month + some setup.

  • From the article:

    >
    Another project forming is Apollo. It's unrelated to this year's releases, but shows a significant amount of dedication from AOL into Gecko's future, both the current codebase, and what is tentatively known as Gecko 2.0.

    Any references?

  • "Huge losses" - accounting bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)

    by edxwelch ( 600979 ) on Thursday February 13, 2003 @05:36AM (#5293452)
    AOL lost no money in 2002. In fact they made $7 billion. These "news reports" are journalists misleading their readers again because having a headline "AOL looses $100 billion" sounds cool and sells copy. In fact, the "loss" refers to the fact that AOL Time Warner is worth less than when they were valued at the time of the merger. Amazing news! Imagine a company worth less now than at the peak of the dot-com bubble!
    • AOL lost no money in 2002. In fact they made $7 billion.

      Have you actually looked at their financial statements? Apparently not. AOL had $2,291,000,000 in revenue in 2002. AOL/TW had $9,424,000,000 in revenue in 2002. (note that is revenues, not profits) They had a net loss of $54,244,000,000. And in fact they incurred this huge loss in 2002 due to writing off $80 Billion in goodwill. Goodwill is essentially how much they overpaid for their purchase of Time Warner. If you pay more than you can afford, you take a loss. What bit of that is "accounting bullshit"?

  • To clear up any confusion (Score:3, Funny)

    by Ilan Volow ( 539597 ) on Thursday February 13, 2003 @05:37AM (#5293456) Homepage
    That's Gecko, not GEICO.

  • Shameless Troll (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Thursday February 13, 2003 @06:26AM (#5293541) Journal
    Is Gecko actually a good thing? When Apple were looking for a browser core to use for Safari, they chose khtml over gecko, because it's cleaner. In reply to this one of the Mozilla guys (I think it was jwz, but don't quote me on that) basically said 'Fair point, our API is really bad in a lot of places and our code is bloated and ugly' (I paraphrase). I use Mozilla, and its memory usage when I last looked (yesterday) was 81MB. In contrast Opera was sitting at 10MB, rendering pages faster and supporting CSS better (Moz still doesn't support CSS counters, so I can't number headings automatically, for example.) If AOL, or anyone, are thinking of using Gecko then they need to atack the source code with a chainsaw first. 81MB may not be a lot to the average /. reader, but there are a lot of AOL customers out there with only 128MB of ram (or even less, you can run Windows 95 quite happily in 32MB, and I'm sure a lot of their customers still do).

    • Re:Shameless Troll (Score:4, Informative)

      by IamTheRealMike ( 537420 ) on Thursday February 13, 2003 @02:56PM (#5296614)
      Yeah, that is pretty shameless, I must admit.

      Is Gecko actually a good thing?

      Er, yes? Gecko is the best renderer out there by a LONG way. It's the de facto standard on Linux according to my site stats, and for good reason.

      When Apple were looking for a browser core to use for Safari, they chose khtml over gecko, because it's cleaner.

      I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I think that was a dumb mistake. OK, so they made that decision over a year ago, when Mozilla 1.0 wasn't yet out, and the code was much worse than it is now.

      Nonetheless, there are a few things people should bear in mind about this:

      Firstly, the idea that because Gecko was complex, it couldn't be used in a web browser, is a dumb one. Apple have put a lot of effort into bringing KHTML up to scratch, but Gecko was already there. So, if the Galeon, Epiphany, K-Meleon and Pheonix teams can make good browsers based on it, why can't Apple? Apple have way more resources than the Galeon team. Gecko is already one of the most advanced renders out there, they wouldn't even have needed to touch most of the code.

      Secondly, KHTML is still way way immature compared to Gecko. It only recently got support for XML (basic support only). It's still catching up in terms of core standards compliance, and forget about stuff like XSLT, MathML, etc. That's not to bash KHTML, what's there is good, but in terms of usefulness in browsing the web, Gecko owns it. On my site, over 50% of the hits come from Gecko based browsers, something like 40% from IE and I think about 3-4% from Konqueror. KHTML and Gecko have been choices on Linux for a long time, yet most seem to use Gecko.

      To be honest, I think they chose KHTML because it was hard to make Gecko efficiently use the unusual Mac rendering model. Web browsing was really showing up the fact that Macs are slow these days, in ways that can't be disguised using hardware acceleration, or windowing system tricks etc. KHTML could be more easily hacked to get raw speed, which is clearly more important to them than features or website compatability.

      I use Mozilla, and its memory usage when I last looked (yesterday) was 81MB. In contrast Opera was sitting at 10MB, rendering pages faster and supporting CSS better (Moz still doesn't support CSS counters, so I can't number headings automatically, for example.)

      But Opera still has sucky DOM support (i think) etc etc. 81mb sounds very large indeed, I've never seen Moz use even half that. Bear in mind accurately measuring memory usage is hard with standard OS tools, as they usually don't adequately distinguish between shared libs etc.

  • RIP Netscape, but it's been dead for a long time (Score:3, Informative)

    by Zog The Undeniable ( 632031 ) on Thursday February 13, 2003 @08:07AM (#5293706)
    I preferred Netscape to IE, even 4.0 which crashed constantly, but Mozilla has really made Netscape unnecessary for anyone who wants an alternative browser.

    My only concern is that AOLTW continues to pay their development team - contrary to what some people think, Mozilla isn't all coded by like-minded geeks scattered throughout the Internet; a hell of a lot of it was bashed out by salaried Netscape employees. But if AOL want Gecko, I guess they'll have to keep coughing up.

  • From the article:
    Gecko's Bright Future
    Gecko is the engine in the current Mac OS X client release

    Uhhmmm... No, [com.com] it's [slashdot.org] not [kde.org].

    If he's got this wrong, what else has he got wrong?

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