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Mozilla The Internet Internet Explorer Netscape

The Browser Wars Are Back? 634

Posted by michael from the can't-keep-a-good-browser-down dept.
jpkunst writes "ZDNet UK reports and PCWorld.com report that, according to Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, whose comments came during a discussion with Yahoo Chief Operating Officer Dan Rosensweig at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, 'the browser wars are back', thanks to the emerging popularity of products such as Apple's Safari and the open-source Firefox. Andreessen warned that 'competition could compel the company [Microsoft] to use aggressive tactics to protect its Windows operating system monopoly'."
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The Browser Wars Are Back? More

The Browser Wars Are Back?

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  • opera (Score:3, Interesting)

    by genner ( 694963 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:46AM (#10470159)
    Firefox, Safari? What about Opera! I'm sick of
    being left out of the browser wars. I like my
    mouse gesture enabled browser thak you very much.

    • Re:opera (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:49AM (#10470195)
      yeah, ok. [mozdev.org]

    • Three Words (Score:5, Informative)

      by cryptochrome ( 303529 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:49AM (#10470196) Journal
      Opera's Not Free
      • Yes it is.

        There's a Google ads-supported free version of Opera and a paid for ad-free version. Either way, you've got a damn good browser, arguably the best one around.

        A great deal of the features that FireFox users rave about came from Opera, and every version brings even more innovation. It's even smaller and faster than FireFox too (IIRC.)

        And, before someone starts saying that its UI takes up too much screen space, let me just say that the default interface in the latest version is tiny (and, of cours

        • Re:Three more (more accurate) words... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by ydnar ( 946 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @11:12AM (#10470533) Homepage
          It may be gratis, but it's not libre.

        • Re:Three more (more accurate) words... (Score:5, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 08, 2004 @11:14AM (#10470559)

          There's a Google ads-supported free version of Opera and a paid for ad-free version. Either way, you've got a damn good browser

          I wouldn't call something with an annoying, distracting animation in the corner of my eye all the time to be a damn good browser.

          (And I have a legitimate license for Opera).

          About the only website that the current version Opera has a problem with is Gmail, because of all its weird code, and even then there are simple workarounds for that.

          It was my understanding that it was because Opera lacked the XMLHTTPRequest object, which isn't "weird" and can't be worked around.

          So, to recap, Opera is a smaller, faster, more feature-packed browser that's on the cutting edge.

          Smaller and faster? Not in my experience. More feature-packed? You haven't actually listed any features it has that its competitors do not. You've focussed on trying to rebut criticisms against it instead of talking about what it can actually do that other browsers can't.

        • Stability (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Andy Dodd ( 701 ) <atd7@@@cornell...edu> on Friday October 08, 2004 @11:16AM (#10470597) Homepage
          On one of my old systems, Opera happened to be the only browser light/fast enough to run reasonably on that system.

          My main dislike of it? It was unstable as hell. :( It crashed frequently, even more often than IE on my Windows boxes.

          At that time, Mozilla was massively bloated. From what I've heard, and experienced, Firefox is much closer to Opera in terms of size and speed than the Mozilla of old, and it's *damn stable*.
        • Ad-supported does not equal free in my book. It costs my time and attention, and my monitor is cluttered enough as is. That goes for Eudora as well.

          For the record, I use Safari, which boots and runs faster than Firefox in my experience and looks better, although on occasion does not render correctly. My only major wish is for mime-type behavior control. Of course, it's mac-only.

          I tried Opera once and while I don't recall the details, I remember not being impressed with performance or stability. I jus

    • Re:opera (Score:5, Informative)

      by hype7 ( 239530 ) <u3295110@noSPam.anu.edu.au> on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:51AM (#10470234) Journal
      Firefox, Safari? What about Opera! I'm sick of

      being left out of the browser wars. I like my
      mouse gesture enabled browser thak you very much.


      there's nothing opera-specific about mouse enabled gestures.

      here it is for OS X, supporting all major browsers and many other apps:
      http://www.bitart.com/CocoaGestures.html [bitart.com]

      Cocoa Gestures adds mouse gestures to any Cocoa program such as Mail, Address Book, iCal, TextEdit, Safari, Chimera, OmniWeb, Path Finder, Stone Design's great suite of applications like Create, and many others.

      -- james
      • Just who do you think came up with mouse gestures? Opera did, that's who. Everyone else's mouse gestures are "me too" additions.

        • Re:Not Opera-specific? (Score:5, Informative)

          by aed ( 156746 ) * on Friday October 08, 2004 @11:13AM (#10470549)
          Just who do you think came up with mouse gestures?

          Not Opera, that's for sure :-)

          I remember using software which gave me mouse gestures in Windows about 9 years ago, not too long after the first release of Windows 95.

          According to their site, Opera released their first Windows browser (version 2.1) in 1996.

    • Re:opera (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jens_UK ( 615572 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:51AM (#10470241) Journal
      Well, they are not enabled by default, but gestures can be added to Firefox: http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/showlist.php? category=Mouse%20Gestures [mozilla.org]

    • Re:opera (Score:5, Informative)

      by TheRealMindChild ( 743925 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:54AM (#10470294) Homepage Journal
      Opera is one of the FEW pay for Web Browsers, AND it is the most horrible browser *I* have ever used. Especially its crippled javascript implementation is enough to drive a geek to burn villages and blow up trains

      • Re:opera (Score:3, Funny)

        by genner ( 694963 )
        I'll go warn the villagers.

      • Re:opera (Score:3, Informative)

        by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 )
        Again, more FUD. Opera's JavaScript hasn't been an issue for sometime now.

        • Re:opera (Score:5, Interesting)

          by TheRealMindChild ( 743925 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @11:45AM (#10471003) Homepage Journal
          I don't think so champ. Indulge me, ever so quickly...

          Make 3 pages, called main.html, topframe.html, and bottomframe.html. And dont worry. I took a whole 3 minutes putting this together. No need to thank me.

          Begin main.html
          <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN">
          <html>
          <head>
          <title>Main</title>
          <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
          </head>
          <frameset rows="50%,50%">
          <frame name="mytop" src="topframe.html" scrolling="no" frameborder=0 noresize>
          <frame name="mybottom" src="bottomframe.html" scrolling="no" frameborder=0 noresize>
          </frameset>
          </html>
          End main.html

          Begin topframe.html
          <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
          <html>
          <head>
          <title>Top</title>
          <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
          </head>
          <body>
          <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
          function printframe()
          {
          window.parent.mybottom.window.focus();
          window.parent.mybottom.window.print();
          }
          </script>
          This page should never print<br>
          <form name="PrintTest" method="get" action="">
          <input type="button" name="printme" value="Print other frame" OnClick="printframe(); return false;">
          </form>
          </body>
          </html>
          End topframe.html

          Begin bottomframe.html
          <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
          <html>
          <head>
          <title>Bottom</title>
          <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
          </head>
          <body>
          <b>Only this page should print!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!</b>
          </body>
          </html>
          End bottomframe.html

          Now I even made sure they pass the w3c validator so as to not get blame from having invalid pages. Anyway, that code works perfect in the top browsers... all except Opera. Opera, even the most current version (This has been a bug for as long as I have known in Opera), will print every frame, where as all other browsers will properly print their specific target. I used this perticular example because it is the most recent one I have had the priviledge of dealing with. Believe me, there are hundereds more. Ive got a notebook dedicated specifically to Opera bugs I should watch out for

      • Re:opera (Score:4, Informative)

        by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @11:37AM (#10470888) Journal
        I don't know what version of Opera you used, but the one I used had two JavaScript implementations. One of which conformed to the ECMA specification, and another that is bug-compatible with IE (it switched between them depending on what you told it to identify as). It also included more complete CSS2 support than any other browser I've used (although Safari generally provided nicer looking output from the same CSS, particularly on things like shadows and bevels).

    • Re:opera (Score:5, Insightful)

      by betelgeuse-4 ( 745816 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:58AM (#10470360) Homepage Journal
      Opera was around during the original browser wars but was never a serious contender (in terms of market share). What makes you think it is a serious contender now? Firefox has mouse gesture extensions (some people don't like them anyway), has managed to gain a reputation as more secure than IE and, as others have pointed out, is free.

      • Re:opera (Score:3, Insightful)

        by ACNSlave ( 750608 )
        Opera was around during the original browser wars but was never a serious contender (in terms of market share). What makes you think it is a serious contender now?

        I'm no Opera Fan, but I have to point out the logical fallacy here (which, by the way the people who marked this guy insightful should read): Product A had no market share at some point in time. Support your argument that it should have more market share now.

        Can you see how easily that same argument can be turned against your favorite br

  • Protecting the Monopoly (Score:5, Funny)

    by PonyHome ( 625218 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:46AM (#10470161)
    Yeah, Microsoft might take some REALLY extreme tactic to protect their monopoly -- like giving their browser away for free, bundled with the operating system! Oh, wait....

    • Re:Protecting the Monopoly (Score:5, Funny)

      by Mattintosh ( 758112 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:50AM (#10470211)
      That'll be a good tactic against Safari... ...

      AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

      Sorry. :)

    • Re:Protecting the Monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Bastian ( 66383 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:53AM (#10470274)
      OK, so they've got the embrace done.

      I predict that their REALLY extreme tactic will be to start throwing every "extension" they can think of into IE, especially ones that break compatibility with other browsers and webservers.

      Well, every "extension" except for security, that is. =D

      • Re:Protecting the Monopoly (Score:4, Insightful)

        by DennisZeMenace ( 131127 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @12:31PM (#10471658) Homepage
        I don't think that'll work anymore because there are just too many people using open-source browsers nowadays, including all Mac users.

        Microsoft's enormous mistake was to drop IE for the Mac. Back in the days, when you complained to a webmaster about a webpage not rendering well on Linux, you'd get laughed at. I got even insulted once, about how i had to use a 'serious' browser. Now, when you complain about a page not rendering well on a Mac, webmasters take you seriously because Mac OS gets a lot more respect as a desktop OS.

        While there are still web sites out there that don't render well outside of IE, there are a LOT less of them compared to three years ago.

        If I were MS, I'd make a huge marketing campaign about a brand new browser, with a different name and all, with all sorts of new features, and make sure you provide a Mac version. If they were smart, they'd release a Linux version too, but god knows pigs will fly when that happens...

        -DZM
      • You mean like ActiveX controls? I can think of many web services that don't work without ActiveX.. particullary some web conference software. However I think most of those are going to eventually have to change and go under. I know we dropped a few at the company I work for because our Unix users couldn't use them in Mozilla. Instead we went with one that had java-based clients

    • Re:Protecting the Monopoly (Score:5, Interesting)

      by hype7 ( 239530 ) <u3295110@noSPam.anu.edu.au> on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:57AM (#10470338) Journal
      maybe the reason MS have stopped caring is that there is no longer any reason to care.

      they offered IE for free in the hope that they could "embrace and extend" the internet - stopping all other browsers, and thereby stopping all other platforms - but it didn't work. so why should they bother any more? there's nothing to be gained by owning the users browser.

      on the other hand, owning where they buy all their music from... now that might be a lucrative business to get into...

      -- james

      • Re:Protecting the Monopoly (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Coryoth ( 254751 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @11:25AM (#10470710) Homepage Journal
        they offered IE for free in the hope that they could "embrace and extend" the internet - stopping all other browsers, and thereby stopping all other platforms - but it didn't work. so why should they bother any more? there's nothing to be gained by owning the users browser.

        There is still a lot ot be gained from owning the users browser, because at long last real rich GUI apps are starting to be available over the web. We were promised web applications a long time ago, but all we got were forms and web pages that, while providing an interface were quite slow, and had a very bare bones interface.

        Microsofts big new technology advancement for Longhorn is XAML and Avalon which, in theory, brings real fast rich web applications to the world. In the meantime firefox/mozilla is busy with XUL and related technologies (if you want to see what XUL can do, take a look at this site [faser.net]).

        Web applications are going to happen. They aren't going to replace locally installed apps entirely, but they will fill niches with, for instance, powerful webmail interfaces (that look and behave like a local GUI), tax calculation apps, calendaring services, and all those simple database frontends etc. The question then, is who is going to provide the architecture for Web Apps? MS desperately wants to be the one to do it - because web applications are potentially completely platform agnostic. If Web applications are all XAML, then you need Windows to use them, and MS strengthens their monopoly. If XUL gets a decent foothold, then any platform that has Mozilla, Firefox, or in fact any XUL implementation (XUL is open source and LGPL, so whoever wants to can implement it), is a viable platform for those web apps.

        What MS fears most is a world where a decent chunk of applications are completely platform agnostic, because then people simply won't care about Windows. Lose the monopoly stranglehold, and MS will be in severe trouble.

        To keep that monopoly stranglehold MS has to, if not win this latest browser war, at least keep the fight going long and hard enough that Longhorn has significant market share (that's well past the release date), and hence XAML is the most widely available architecture via which to deliver web apps, before Mozilla/Firefox gets any really significant market share.

        This war is surprisingly important.

        Jedidiah.

      • Re:Protecting the Monopoly (Score:4, Insightful)

        by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @11:36AM (#10470864) Journal
        they offered IE for free in the hope that they could "embrace and extend" the internet - stopping all other browsers, and thereby stopping all other platforms - but it didn't work. so why should they bother any more?

        Imagine what they COULD have done by leveraging IE into developing weblications!

        The biggest problem with web-based anything is the lack of control you have over the browser. Not coincidentally, this is why development time for web-based applications is quick - the application output is very simple.

        For example, I've written a medium-sized application (~40,000 lines) in PHP-GTK [php.net] and love the control I get over the client experience in the application. User chooses X, I pop up a dropdown list to get more information, pop up an editor that captures their input in real time, etc....

        It's hard to impossible to do all this with javascript, but it's sort of what I'm talking about.

        Take javascript, make it 10x more powerful, and provide some security measures.

        For example, a certificate that would have to be installed in the browser first before scripts from NNN site would operate. Control the distribution of the certificates, and you control access to the application! You could use a bi-directional certificate so that both sides authenticate each other!

        Run this over HTTPS and you'd have a damn secure application framework that would allow for:

        1) Rapid application development times - On the server it'd be a set of ASP/PHP style scripts.

        2) Rich client-ish interfaces that make XUL look tame.

        3) Secure by design. Your scripts would only be accessable to somebody with a valid certificate.

        4) If sufficiently developed, the javascript replacement could operate offline merely by saving the script to disk. (stretching things a bit, here)

        In short, all the advantages of web-based design with all the advantages of client-side design. What's not to like?

        They botched it with ActiveX, but it was an attempt at what I'm talking about. Can you imagine trying to fight that?

        Java comes close to the above - but it lacks the security features I'm mentioning, and it's operational characteristics are "heavy" - the JVM is large and slow, particularly in low-memory situations.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @11:02AM (#10470407)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:Protecting the Monopoly (Score:5, Funny)

        by Hoplite3 ( 671379 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @12:51PM (#10471944)
        {knocks on door}
        Sir, I'm from the microsoft corporation. I was sent to "upgrade" your browsing experience. Plase bend over and drop your shorts.

        No, sir, this isn't really necessary. Our geeks are working on a way to use XAML to automatically download and solder metal on to your ass over the internet. Yep, the future is coming.
    • You joke, but with the amount of money that Microsoft makes they could very easily refocus on their browser and make it a lot more competitive. If they added tabbed browsing, popup blocking, and a few other popular FireFox features they would prevent a lot of average Windows users from switching to FireFox.

      With all the money they make there, I really can't understand why they _don't_ do this. It makes no sense at all why they'd just give up on their browser like they have.

  • Oh goody. (Score:5, Funny)

    by psbrogna ( 611644 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:47AM (#10470170)
    Well it's about time- we were damn close to having actual web standards. Glad we dodged that bullet.

    • Re:Oh goody. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rootofevil ( 188401 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:49AM (#10470209) Homepage Journal
      standardizing on IE? as a web designer, id rather shoot myself in the face than be saddled with IEs "enhancements" and "features" thankyouverymuch.

      whats so hard about loading a transparent PNG anyway?

      • Re:Oh goody. (Score:3, Informative)

        by mini me ( 132455 )
        whats so hard about loading a transparent PNG anyway?

        What's even worse is that IE does support transparent PNGs, if you apply a filter to it. Why can that be the default action for PNGs?

  • All MS needs to do to compete is imitate (Score:5, Interesting)

    by winkydink ( 650484 ) * <sv.dude@gmail.com> on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:49AM (#10470201) Homepage Journal
    Just watch Safari & Firefox development and imitate the functionality. Joe User then has no compelling reason to switch.

  • Too late , too little (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gopal.V ( 532678 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:49AM (#10470206) Homepage Journal
    When my company started putting "Best Viewed in Firefox/Mozilla" on the intranet . I knew that the browser wars are over .

    Microsoft may be able to do something however late it is (see .NET and Java) ... but I suspect Mozilla's not as slow as Java in responding , especially when it's Microsoft

    • *sigh* "Best Viewed"? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:54AM (#10470284)

      When my company started putting "Best Viewed in Firefox/Mozilla"...

      Why do people continue to insist on stupid "Best viewed with X" labels. Your website should be developed to display properly on any standards-compliant browser, and not be restricted to a particular platform or application.

      Why not put up one of those "Try Firefox" icons instead of implying that other standards-compliant browsers (namely Opera) might have trouble with your poorly-designed site?

    • Re:Too late , too little (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Mattygfunk1 ( 596840 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:58AM (#10470346)
      When my company started putting "Best Viewed in Firefox/Mozilla" on the intranet . I knew that the browser wars are over .

      When you said your company started putting "Best Viewed in Firefox/Mozilla" on your intranet, I knew that your developers missed the point of web standards and the browser wars entirely.

    • Re:Too late , too little (Score:5, Insightful)

      by lukewarmfusion ( 726141 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:59AM (#10470362) Homepage Journal
      "When my company started putting "Best Viewed in Firefox/Mozilla" on the intranet . I knew that the browser wars are over."

      1. That's very 1997 of you. Good job.
      2. The browser wars are not over; that's like claiming that Palestine has suddenly won the conflict over Israel. (Yes, I did just compare Microsoft to Israel and Mozilla to Palestine. Politics aside, I think their positions are similar.)
      3. Your company is, at most, a drop in the ocean compared to the [steadily declining] number of IE users out there. You might have fifty users on Firefox, or you might have ten thousand.

      It comes down to a business decision. If you force software upon your employees, will they be more or less productive? Will they actually use it, or will they use the alternatives? If your company's employees come to work after checking their email in AOL on Windows 98, they might not be comfortable using Firefox. It shouldn't be that way, but not everybody moves very easily. This is the same reason why OpenOffice.org isn't more popular. Luckily for Mozilla (esp. Firefox), their product has so many advantages that people are willing to undergo the relatively painless process of switching.
      • Yes, I did just compare Microsoft to Israel and Mozilla to Palestine. Politics aside, I think their positions are similar

        Politics aside, I think you're a troll.

  • I think the whole virus thing is really helping (Score:4, Interesting)

    by hsmith ( 818216 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:50AM (#10470221)
    as bad as it sounds. You add browser hijacking, security holes in MS OS's volla!

    MS needs to unhook the browser from the OS, i think this turned out to be a major assbiter for them now. Becuase it is so intertwined they have allowed the holes to become easily exploitable.

    maybe they will finally rewrite IE and allow for it to be better? but lets not cross our fingers

  • Not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Schweg ( 730121 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:50AM (#10470223)
    This issue seems to have come to a head in the past year or so, particular in the corporate environment.

    I am IT director for a small division of a company near Philadelphia, and the problems caused by IE in our environment have increased greatly in the past year. We spend more time than ever fixing problems caused by spyware in particular.

    This also falls into a timeframe when the browser alternatives have been getting much better (Mozilla, Firefox). We are currently planning to move everyone to Firefox as their default browser once it has been released as 1.0 or better.

  • "Aggressive tactics" (Score:3, Funny)

    by ARRRLovin ( 807926 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:50AM (#10470225)
    You mean, like actually putting some developers on IE and shining it up a bit? At least give it a bit of XP flavor or something, call it IE 2005 or something.

  • I use Windows on my laptop... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dodongo ( 412749 ) <{ude.eudrup.inmula} {ta} {htimskcuhc}> on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:51AM (#10470233) Homepage
    And I certainly don't browse with IE; I use Firefox. I use Windows on my laptop because it's most convenient for what I do. Furthermore, it's also convenient just to have a Windows box lying around :)

    That said, I use SuSE 9.1 on my desktop and I love it dearly. I wouldn't go back for any reason. Yes, there's still the occasional glitch or issue I don't know how to resolve, but I'm fine with that.

    Microsoft needs to understand, though, that if any sort of aggressive monopoly protection significantly affects the way in which I use my laptop computer, WindowsXP SP 2 will be going the same way as the Windows XP on my desktop: right out the, er, window.

  • HypeWars (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:51AM (#10470242) Homepage Journal
    Maybe the browser wars are back, but that gasbag Andreessen is clamoring to be back at any rhetorical cost. He hasn't done anything useful since he butchered HTML with the badly coded tag, which he couldn't even code himself at NCSA. Since then, he's gone from expensive blowhard spokesmodel for the biggest IPO in history, to has-been blown '90s dude. Only _Wired_ even listens to him anymore.

  • Not Until IE is Unbundled (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dekemoose ( 699264 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:52AM (#10470252)
    It's foolish to think that alternative browsers will ever have more than a few percentage points as long as users have what appears to them be a perfectly good browser sitting on their computer when they unpack it from Dell/Gateway/Whatever. We're talking about people who for the most part don't have the competence to download security fixes, let alone downloading a new browser. Just as Windows is synonymous with computers for most people, IE is synonymous for the Internet. I'll believe the browser wars are back when Dell (oor similar) bundles Firefox with their machines.

  • Say it ain't so (Score:5, Funny)

    by ZoneGray ( 168419 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:52AM (#10470253) Homepage
    Holy cow! Microsoft is going to start using agressive tactics? How will we ever survive?

  • Alternative browsers? Who knew? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by The I Shing ( 700142 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:55AM (#10470308) Journal
    I don't know about the rest of you, but I still find myself having to explain what a web browser is to 90% of the people I know that use the internet. Many of these people think that their web browser is called "MSN" or "Yahoo." They pull up a portal site as their home page and actually enter URLs into the search window and wait for the portal site to give them the link. I try to tell them about the wonders of Firefox, and they stare at me blankly and say, "But I'm perfectly happy with Yahoo."

    • I'm finding this to be less of a problem (Score:4, Interesting)

      by G27 Radio ( 78394 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @01:13PM (#10472292)
      It seems to me that the typical person I deal with lately catches on pretty quickly to the idea of using a different web browser. Every single home computer I've worked on in the last couple months has been barely usable due to all the spyware on them.

      After cleaning up their machines I install Firefox and tell them about the pop-up blocking and tabbed browsing. I tell them that at this point they should only use IE as a last resort. The explaination literally takes about 30 seconds and I haven't had any problems with people not "getting it."

      I've done this for easily a dozen different people in the last month, and every one I've talked to afterwards has mentioned how much nicer it is browsing with Firefox.

      Maybe I've just been lucky with the people I've done work for recently, but it seems to me that most people are more than happy to make the switch once the software is installed and demonstrated to them.

      Undoubtedly there are people out there that just can't be bothered (from what I've read on here at least,) but at that point it's their problem and they'll be paying me if I have to come back and clean the crap off their computer again.

      PS: I just wish Firefox would render Slashdot consistently. WTF?

    • Re:Alternative browsers? Who knew? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Spoing ( 152917 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @01:35PM (#10472571) Homepage
      1. "But I'm perfectly happy with Yahoo."

      I encounter similar statements. Most people think that they have to set the browser home page to the ISP they are using and click on things from there.

      Here's what I found: I haven't talked anyone into using Firefox or Mozilla, let alone Linux. Don't tell them how wonderful it is...they won't get it!

      Here's what works;

      Ask them if they have problems with pop-ups.

      Ask them if they have problems with 'the Internet'. Get details on these 'problems'.

      If either answer is 'yes', ask them what sites they like to go to.

      Install Firefox, and add those sites to the Home page; create tabs for each site, bookmark the tabs, use that bookmark folder as the user's home page.

      Import IE settings.

      Show them this new program. Show them how easy it is to click on the tabs for each web site.

      Point out that there are no popups.

      If necessary, tweak Firefox to 'fix the problems' encountered with IE.

      Having said all that, I can't get my older sister to look at anything but IE...while about a month ago two people outside of work have asked me for help in installing Firefox and one other person asked me to install Linux after I showed him Firefox and mentioned Linux in passing. (This last person is a total novice; hadn't turned his computer on during most of last year). All are happy and have not switched back to IE.

  • So What? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PincheGab ( 640283 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:55AM (#10470313)
    OK so if new browsers want to take "marketshare" from IE, then they are going to have to handle pages exactly as IE does... As opposed to the old days when IE had to be compatible with Netscape when Netscape was the leader.

    Also: What market share? If browsers are freely-available, is it really a "market"?

    Now that IE is free as in beer and is the 900-pound gorilla, what will make people switch to alternatives en masse? Are security scares enough motivation? My experience is that "Normal" people seem to care little about the "backdoor of the week" syndrome, and they feel specially secure when they have turned automatic updates on

    So, why will people switch?

  • The missing link: Distribution Channel (Score:4, Insightful)

    by otisg ( 92803 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:57AM (#10470343) Homepage Journal
    Firefox & Co. are coming back, and that software is indeed technically superior to IE. However, Mozilla foundation still misses one crucial piece of the puzzle: a distribution channel. Until somebody with a big distribution channel jumps in and helps Mozilla, my web server access log will continue showing Mozilla user base growth of less than 1%/month/year.

    That is where GBrowser comes into play. Google has a massive distribution channel that knows no OS boundaries.

  • One Fight that Micro$oft Cannot Win (Score:4, Insightful)

    by reporter ( 666905 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:58AM (#10470349) Homepage
    One fight that Micro$oft cannot win is the fight between open source and Micro$oft -- if a stable company backs any piece of open source software. In the particular case, we need a company like IBM to back FireFox in order to persuade commercial customers to use it. Commercial customers absolutely need to know that, if a flaw in FireFox is not addressed promptly and correctly by volunteer programmers, then IBM wil step into the picture and fix the problem immediately.

    The reason that Micro$oft cannot win in this kind of fight is that there is no company paying the salaries of the programmers developing FireFox. It is a volunteer effort.

    In the case of the Netscape browser, Netscape was a commerical company and essentially cut its own jugular in funding Netscape development and support and giving it away for free, but where could Netscape get its money to grow? It tried branching into commercial Web servers, but there were too many competitors in that market. Netscape was headed for bankruptcy.

    In the case of FireFox, there is no company for Micro$oft to crush. Round 1 and the game goes to FireFox and the open-source movement. <applause>

  • Simple explanation (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gilesjuk ( 604902 ) <giles.jones@nospaM.zen.co.uk> on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:58AM (#10470352)
    Microsoft is waiting for the competition to come up with all the new ideas and take the lead. Microsoft will then implement these ideas in IE with their own take on the idea.

    Microsoft will then hype up these new developments as if they were their ideas and go on about how their right to innovate is important.

  • Also: Microsoft are not extending IE for Mac (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tod_miller ( 792541 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:58AM (#10470355) Journal
    news.com.com.com.com.com

    I think Microsoft still want to keep people on IE, but they are unable to concentrate thier efforts, and with the hullabaloo they are working behind the scenes to 'extract' the browser.

    IE has kinda been tapered into a usable yet dangerous browser - firefox is fairly good (I have a wish list and potential bug list too long for me to sift through bugzilla reports)

    Opera is good, does its job.

    What is next for the humble browser? Integration? Better / faster rendering? I think not.

    Perhaps being able to do a simple task better.

    I personally would preffer my email and web in one box, so thunderbird developers write a neat plugin for firefox that combines them quickly and seamlessly.

    And the sunbird calendar is good. Again, I want them in one side bar, F7 for mail and F8 for calendar, Fsomethingelse bookmarks, Fagain for RSS links.

    And remove the download window :-/ unless it gets as good as a real d/l manager, it is more of a hassle!

    I like the autodownload features, I can rip down pdf files from a list without fsssskking Adowbee Acrowbaht Readuh trying to happily rape my ram.

  • Don't worry, MS (Score:5, Interesting)

    by koi88 ( 640490 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @11:00AM (#10470386)

    Honestly, I think MS has little to fear of Mozilla & Co.
    Don't mod me Troll, I love Firefox, Safari and Opera and use them almost exclusively. Yet when I try to convince my Windows-using friends the reaction is usually "But the included browser (if they know this expression) works fine. I'm used to it."
    It's incredibly difficult to compete with a program that comes installed with the OS.
    I think the population of really internet-savy people, people who care about their browser, is no more than 5-10%. These people can be won. The vast majority will stay with IE.

    • Re:Don't worry, MS (Score:5, Insightful)

      by I confirm I'm not a ( 720413 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @11:20AM (#10470643) Journal

      "But the included browser (if they know this expression) works fine. I'm used to it."

      Aye, I get this argument too (and also from people I'd expect to know better ;) but I just don't get it:
      wordpad comes bundled with Windows; yet the first thing most people do is install Word. I think that that needs to be our argument: "IE is a capable-enough browser, a bit like wordpad or the Windows firewall, but a power-use like you would probably want to upgrade to a proper browser"... or something similar.

      Also, don't underestimate the power of themes and extensions! Most of the interest I get in my "strange" browser is from it (a) looking different fairly frequently (usually when a new Firefox is released and my usual theme breaks :( ) or from (b) me using an extension to do something faster than my colleagues.

      It's a slow process, but I feel I'm winning people over bit by bit...

  • I care nothing for your browser wars. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by venomkid ( 624425 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @11:03AM (#10470422)
    For I design my sites to standards.

    (Sure, I kludge it a little to make it look 100% in all the major browsers, but it still validates w3c.)

  • Browsers for specific purposes: (Score:5, Funny)

    by miscellaneous_havoc ( 621991 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @11:03AM (#10470426) Homepage
    I have a purpose for just about every browser out there:

    Firefox - Everyday browsing (Duh!)
    IE - College webmail reading (ActiveX)
    Netscape - When I feel like being punished
    Opera - Searching for pr0n! (Those one-handed guestures. ;)

    Just seems to me you can appreciate them all!
    Make Love not [Browser] War.

  • Come on people, itse easy (Score:3, Funny)

    by Prince Vegeta SSJ4 ( 718736 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @11:04AM (#10470444)
    to pick the winner. Just look at thier pictures.

    Who do you think would win in a fight between THIS [koorenneef.nl] guy, and THIS [kentsalas.com]guy. It's no contest.

  • Indeed, the browser wars are back (Score:3, Informative)

    by d_jedi ( 773213 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @11:18AM (#10470625)
    I was a die-hard IE guy. But what with CERT recommending using an alternate browser for security purposes.. and Microsoft's own recommendations for security all but disabling many sites (I believe their recommendation was to turn off active scripting).. that was when I switched browsers.

    But, alas, because "Set program access and defaults" doesn't actually do $hit.. last weekend I was infected by spyware using IE. Nasty, nasty stuff that just won't die.

    So IE is out for me.. I don't blame Microsoft for the malware (although I DO blame them for a link opening with IE when I had FF set as the default..).. but enough is enough.

    The sites that don't work properly with FF are few.. and I can easily decide if the site is worthy of really browsing by using the open in IE extension.

    My criticism of FF is that extensions break with each release, and that security updates are not available as patches (I could tolerate ONE of them.. but combined it's really a nuisance).

  • For me it has... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by yoshi_mon ( 172895 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @11:26AM (#10470728)
    After being ignored the 1st time I decided to keep a copy the text of my latest email to Bellsouth. When trying to access their page with my latest version of Opera I am told to "upgrade" to IE or Netscape. For the record most of the times when I access this page it's to pay my bill.

    ---
    Once again I would like to renew my request that your website be updated to support all modern browsers. The idea that by running a current version of Opera but then being told to "upgrade" speaks poorly of your website and it's staff.

    The fact that all one must do to access Bellsouth's website is to change the user agent gives lie to the fact any upgrade is need.

    Please respect your customers by allowing them the option of using whatever modern browser they wish instead of making them think that they must use a browser that has so many security issues that the federal government has dissuaded it's use or one that has become outdated.

    Thank you.
    ---

    Yes it may be a little harsh but sometimes you have to be pretty forthright to get past the corperate mindset. Until I get a response I plan on sending this same text once a week.

  • Best browser (Score:3, Interesting)

    by XxtraLarGe ( 551297 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @11:51AM (#10471099) Journal
    I'm a web designer/programmer among other things at work, so I have most of the browsers available for testing. I use IE as my main browser on my PC, but I also have FireFox & Netscape for testing purposes. At home I have an iMac. I have Safari, Netscape Navigator & IE installed. I tried OmniWeb, but was unimpressed. IMHO, Safari is far and away the best browser out there, and I'm not even using the version that supports RSS. I still have to use IE whenever I want to print something (odd that an MS product on the Mac would print better?), but that's about all. Maybe you PC people will luck out and Apple will make Safari for Windows. I am thoroughly convinced that if Macromedia ever decided to make a web browser, they would blow everybody out of the water!

  • My reason for sticking with IE (Score:3, Interesting)

    by openSoar ( 89599 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @11:56AM (#10471166)
    The main, perhaps only reason I still use IE is that I find the Yahoo Companion toolbar extremely useful - mainly it's ability to integrate with my online Yahoo Bookmarks and allow me to store/retrieve/edit them from.

    If there was something similar but more generic for Firefox, I'd probably switch over..

    Any suggestions?

  • Competition is a good thing... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JimLynch ( 684194 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @12:12PM (#10471383) Homepage
    A renewed browser war is going to benefit everybody. Microsoft has sat on its ass for far, far too long and allowed IE to stagnate. That was arrogant on their part and now they have to play catch-up to the Mozilla/Firefox/Safari browsers. Regardless of which browser you prefer, real competition and innovation is a good thing and should be welcomed by everybody.

  • Build a better mouse trap... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DavidBrown ( 177261 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @12:59PM (#10472051) Journal
    But I thought that Microsoft got rid of all of the competition by illegal exercise of its monopoly power?

    The good news is that innovation (including better security) are good reasons to switch from even heavily-entrenched products.

    The bad news is that some people may have to admit that Microsoft isn't as guilty as they want it to be. IE beat Netscape for the simple reason that it sucked less. Sure, maybe being a "monopoly" helped, but that doesn't mean much when browsers were and are still given away for free (a trend which M$ didn't start).

    If Firefox overtakes IE, I win. If IE gets better, I still win. If Netscape pulls out from under years of browsers not any better and usually worse and more bloaty than IE, I still win. I win, I win, I win. And, honestly, I don't care who else wins with me. It can be MS, or Apple, or the open source community. The point is that competition is still alive in the browser world, even if all of the things Netscape whined about were true.

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