Browser Wars II: The Saga Continues 758
adamsmith_uk writes "For the first time in three years something has happened in browser land. In fact, major events have started happening at a breathtaking pace. Time for a long overview that tells the whole story. "
Too bad (Score:5, Informative)
The last update has been 2002 and it never got updated since.
What is it with you and ping times? (Score:0, Informative)
Climate of fear (Score:5, Informative)
To put it mildly we were howled down. People wanted to continue with IE and Outlook. They were happy to add absurd bits of additional software to stop duff information getting as far as IE and Outlook, but they weren't prepared to change them.
IE 7 comment misses the point (Score:2, Informative)
There's one important point this guy is missing here. Big corporations often provide web applications that are based on the latest IE. To do my job I have to use one particular web app. provided by my firms supplier. It requires IE 6. If I wanted to use IE 5.5, I am SOL. When this supplier starts to require IE 7 we will have to upgrade our Windows.
So by tying IE 7 to the OS Microsoft can just about guarantee corporate acceptance of the upcoming windows. Even now, we can't switch completely to Linux because we would not be able to do business. Sucks if you ask me.
Re:the future is now. (Score:5, Informative)
I hate to break this to you, but Netscape *is* Mozilla, with some branding added to it, and the odd feature to link in with AOL... but most of the development for Netscape is done by the Mozilla team (who incidently, has a sizable proportion of Netscape employees paid to work for them).
So in other words... (Score:4, Informative)
#4 is not quite what you propose, because that would be a serious and unnecessary drain on a Web site's bandwidth. A site can specify whether a link is allowed to be pre-cached (not by default), and Mozilla will pre-cache it for you if you've enabled this feature (also not by default).
Re:something evil (Score:2, Informative)
As an aside, how do I change the keys for moving through tabs in Mozilla? They are truely awful - the three browsers above use F2 and F3 and Opera uses 1 and 2 (and is easily customisable) which are much, much better.
--jobby
Stability or Innovation or What? (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know as I can say what people really want more - stable browsers, or new [useful] features. I know I'm all for the stable/reliable/unified/etc. browser design, but then again, I'm not a M$-using consumer whore.
Re:OK, I'll bite (Score:1, Informative)
Type Ahead Find (now labeled "find as you type") has pretty much revolutionized the way I surf almost to the same extent as tabbed browsing did, and that was added 8 months ago! Bayesian Spam filters (which I believe to be available in an integrated form only in Mozilla mail, all other clients that I am aware of requiring something external and thus not ready for end-users) is only 5 months old!
Development on similar interesting new features has pretty much stopped since the new roadmap though!
Re:IE MAC the best browser for a year (Score:3, Informative)
It's Safari not "Saffari."
It's the not "teh."
Kidding
IE was the best browser on the Mac probably since 4.5, and certainly since 5.0. There's no question about that. Was it the best browser period? I think it was, crashes notwithstanding. It lost what was left of it's lustre, though, when it came to OS X.
Mozilla is slow and ugly. Safari is clearly it's equal or it's better and six months time will see it clearly surpass all competitiors on the Mac.
The real question is, will there be anything as good on Windows? There are serveral contenders, but which will be the best? IE won't, it's too old. Mozilla? Could be, I guess. Opera? I'm doubting it myself, but anything could happen.
My guess is that it won't matter a bit which browser is "better." People will continue to use IE 6 for as long as it takes for 7 to appear in a future release of Windows. Web content will be developed for IE 6 with all it's crappy incompatibilities and quirks and when "better" browsers like Safari or Mozilla (or whoever takes the title on Windows) choke on sites developed explicitly for IE 6 people will say "damn, this browser sucks!" with little or no understanding of what's really going on.
Re:IE MAC the best browser for a year (Score:1, Informative)
if you use Macs regularly then why do you tpe MAC? it's not an acronymn it's an abbreviation for Macintosh, not MACintosh.
Example:
Re:OK, I'll bite (Score:5, Informative)
- NTLM support
- open multiple home pages in tabs
- per-site popup blocking
- rich-edit control (Midas)
- image auto-sizing
- dynamic profile switching
- find as you type
- bookmark groups
- XML prettyprinting
- WSDL support
- composer has image and table resizing
- junk mail controls
- link prefetching
- more info on Page Info panel
- extra tab browsing options
- download manager improvements
- more intelligent autocomplete
- view selection source
Re:Heck... (Score:3, Informative)
(And check out the new sig I just stole
Re:It's true, Firebird is the best. (Score:3, Informative)
I have about 20-30 windows with about 3-8 tabs each open normally and it rarely crashes, and if it does, only one window crashes.
Re:Mozilla's not *fat*, it's *big boned* (Score:3, Informative)
Nope, that's the Win32 binary (zip) archive. Just decompress and go. Uncompressed, it runs about 18MB.
ZIP compressed, the archive runs about 7.4MB. BZ2 compressed, the archive runs about 6.5MB.
Please note that these figures are for the 20030101 nightly binary, not a milestone.
I've finally switched to Mozilla Firebird (Score:4, Informative)
But I've had it with popups, and the "last stand-alone" version of IE is the final straw. So I've switched to Firebird at home and as of today, at work. Pretty painless transition really, I can even drag and drop my Toolbar quick-links from IE to Firebird. So far so good.
NetCaptor (Score:1, Informative)
It has all the "advantages" of regular IE... namely, compatibility with the great majority of web sites and software out there. Now, it simply adds a ton of features, including most of what Mozilla/Netscape/whatever offers, on top of that IE engine.
What can it do?
-Highly-configurable tabbed browsing
-Pop-up blocking that blocks either unrequested popups (quite reliable) or URL (unnecessary, but there if you need it)
-Ad=blocking (based on configurable URLs, with wildcard support, exclusions, and more)
-Grouped favorites (meaning you can open a series of sites together, and they'll load as seperate tabs)
-Cookie management
-Built-in mouse gestures
-Built-in history/search/cookie/whatever data wipe upon browser close, including up to 35x data overwrite.
-User-configurable address bar-based search/bookmark functions (i.e. instead of typing "www.google.com", I can just type "g" to go there... or I can type "g search term" to be brought directly to the result page for that search term. Or type "d strangeword" for a fast dictionary definition."
-Easy-to-access dropdown buttons/menus that allow you to do to the current site: Translate (BabelFish), Whois info, Waybackmachine, Google cached pages, similar sites, site information, anonymizer, and more.
-Fast menu toggling of various media loading (images, sounds, animations, javascript, activex, etc.)
It does all of that, and more, while maintaining IE's familiar interface and rendering engine. With 90% of Mozilla's advantages gone, I don't have much incentive to switch anymore.
Of course, it's not perfect. It costs $30 (shareware). It is not open-source (although the developer does listen and respond to feedback). But in the end, I found that it's much easier than using Mozilla. I never have to worry about incompatible webpages, plugins, or web programs. I can stick with the shortcut keys and interface that I've grown so familiar with.
I know I don't speak for all types of users -- for example, anyone running Linux will be excluded, since there's only a Windows version, and anyone who insists on OSS will not be happy with it -- but for other users who, like me, either don't want to or cannot switch to Linux, I think software like this is actually better than Mozilla.
And before anyone shouts "wannabe", I believe NetCaptor had a lot of those features (tabbed browsing, popup blocking) before Mozilla did, and in some cases, implemented them better too.
I don't work for the Netcaptor company, and I do respect the work the Mozilla/Firebird/etc. teams do. I simply think there is an alternative out there that is very rarely mentioned, one that makes it more unncessary to switch from IE, and it wouldn't hurt to give it a little attention. Perhaps some people will even find it useful, as I did.
Re:the future is now. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:That still counts (Score:2, Informative)
The original article said this is exactly what the Mozilla Project needs to do. How unfortunate for the author that he was out of the loop and didn't know that we've already been there and done that.
Re:It's true, Firebird is the best. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yup it will be mozilla... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Who cares about bloat? (Score:4, Informative)
Good thing memory is as cheap as water. Too bad the company I work for will only spring for 256MB and doesn't allow us to modify the machines ourselves.
Re:What major changes? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes.
The one without a full, documented API that enables you to actually do things to the content, right?
The W3C DOM API compliant one, which is very well documented and implemented closer to the standard than IE.
The one that doesn't allow you to get actual rendered layout values?
Again, its W3C DOM compliant.
The one that doesn't support the ruby tag?
The "RUBY" tag was recommended to the W3C in 2001 and became part of XHTML 1.1. They're working on it
Re:What major changes? (Score:2, Informative)
But those examples came from the WordPerfect age when applications really mattered. What we are talking about here has become an integral part of any operating system and has become *the* application users work with. The other reality is that even browser applications aren't necessarily OS-neutral.
For example, we are rolling out the web interface that is offered by our new accounting software vendor. Visions of giving the lawyers cheap Linux-based workstations since they just enter time and browse the web were dashed when it turns out their web interface requires an ActiveX control, the MS-XML interpreter, etc. etc. and is thus essentially Windows-only.
The desktop is 0wned, the stand-alone application market is 0wned, and now, in the final coupe-de-grace, the browser sapplication space will be 0wned.
Re:the future is now. (Score:1, Informative)
The result: you are trading memory and cpu usage for disc usage. But megabyte on disc is way cheaper than megabyte in ram.
Your wish is my command (Score:1, Informative)
The recent news about Explorer shows that this Era has come to an end, too. We stand at the beginning of the Fifth Era of browser history. What will it bring?
This article gives an overview of recent events and tries to predict what will come. It tells the whole story, not just bits and pieces of it. Furthermore it answers some questions that other commentators ignore. Why doesn't Explorer Windows fix its CSS support? Who really killed Explorer Mac?
Throughout, the emphasis is on the story, not on the history. Therefore it focuses on the broad overview and leaves out many technical details. The article is meant as a tutorial on creating and spreading browser stories in terms our prospective audience will understand.
Before studying the new stories, a summary of the old ones.
What has gone before
After the smoke of the Browser Wars had driven away, Explorer reigned supreme. It had thoroughly trounced its rival and could rest on its laurels, reaping the rewards of forethoughtful investment. It rested and reaped for three years, growing fat and sluggish in the process.
In the pro-Microsoft view, Explorer took the role of Tragically Misunderstood Prophet. Somehow this role has never caught hold of popular imagination, though. Therefore the Windows version is generally seen as the Evil Usurper, and the Mac version as its Good Cousin that was crowned King of Mac by the machinations of the Usurper but turned out to be a pretty decent one.
Netscape 4 abdicated and took the role of Senile Dinosaur. It retired to its own little corner of browser land, where it still spends its days in happy oblivion. Its health is declining, but its health has been declining continually since its birth two Eras ago, so there's no need to worry.
The Mozilla Project inherited the role of Legitimate Exile, once to return to its rightful domains. The Project slowly plodded forward, while a solid kernel of supporters waited and hoped, waited and hoped, then waited and hoped a little bit more, after which the Project was said to be nearly ready. Mozilla 1.0 came, but by then the world had changed and didn't care quite as much as expected.
Opera was the Sympathetic Outsider. People liked it but didn't really expect it to make significant gains. Nonetheless it showed a slight but consistent growth.
The big surprise of the Fourth Era was Konqueror, which came unexpectedly and stunned the web development community by its general excellency. Its very existence proved that you don't need a huge Project to make a good browser. It didn't really get a role because it didn't fit into the overall scheme of things inherited from the Browser Wars. Besides it was confined to the Linux side of things.
That's how it was, one quiet Era long. But now something has happened in browser land. In fact, major events have started happening at a breathtaking pace.
The real story
"When will there be the next version of IE?"
"As part of the OS, IE will continue to evolve, but there will be no future standalone installations. IE6 SP1 is the final standalone installation".
"Why is this? the anti-trust?"
"Although this is off topic, I will answer briefly: Legacy OSes have reached their zenith with the addition of IE 6 SP1. Further improvements to IE will require enhancements to the underlying OS."
These fabled lines are hidden in a transcript of a talk show, a communication channel curious even for Microsoft's exacting standards. We learn Explorer 7 will be tied to the new Microsoft operating system and we are left to imply that it'll take its own sweet time before actually appearing on the scene.
Criticism immediately reached boiling po
Re:What a load of rambling dribble... (Score:3, Informative)
Just spend some time reading Microsoft's own product announcements, interviews, etc... they don't make any effort to hide any of this. You'd pretty much have to be blind not to see what's going on... oh wait, that pretty much describes most of /. poster community.
First, there's Longhorn...
TechWeb [techweb.com]
WinSuperSite [winsupersite.com]
But don't forget to research Jupiter, Yukon and Kodiak, and be sure to look at the extended feature sets of these products and how they can interoperate.
A quick search for some time lines got me this, but there are lots of places that keep track of this stuff:
Internet.com [internet.com]
Some general info on Jupiter
JupiterResearch [jupiterresearch.com]
...and don't forget MS' own efforts to push rights enabled content into the marketplace:
for one example there is...
...but don't forget, games, their deal with small movie studios, etc...
Microsoft [microsoft.com]
MS is working with British Telecom to develop online applications and media support including appication rental that can be used for an added nominal monthly fee... all of this is web browser accessable, and while the dot's are pretty thin to find, I've heard in the developer circles that once it is stablized around MSN 9, MS is looking to offer this service out to XBox live subscribers.
news.com" [com.com]
...and then there is the MIIS layer that just was released to support data tracking.
MetaConnections [metaconnections.co.uk]
"MIIS has its own data store (the metaverse) into which it consolidates information drawn from the connected systems. Rules can be applied to determine how objects in a connected system are projected into, or join with objects already in, the metaverse and to create objects in the connected system (i.e. provisioning). Other rules specify how each attribute within the object should flow into or out of the metaverse. The sophistication of these rules allows customers to create fully automated identity data integration solutions."
...or this quote:
TheWhir [thewhir.com]
"Customers have told us they need an end-to-end solution for managing identity information and access rights," said Bill Veghte, corporate vice president for the Windows Server Group at Microsoft. "With today's delivery of MIIS, we bring provisioning and metadirectory capabilities together in a single solution that enables customers to create and manage user identities with a single consistent view across the enterprise and throughout the complete life cycle of identity management."
I would point you to the Market announcements on the MS site, but they are oddly missing... but then Google saves the day here...
MS care of Google #1 [216.239.51.104]
MS care of Google #2 [216.239.51.104]
...and on and on and on... Do I really need to give you more links... I suppose it's pointless because with most of the people who can't see this, I could drop a bible of text proof in your face and you'd still denign it.
Microsoft makes no efforts to hide what they're planning, and doing. It's all out there in your face if you bother to take the time to read it.
Big business wants start-to-end accountability for ALL DATA, and they are going to get it, and Microsoft is going
Re:the future is now. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Safari DID NOT kill IE X (Score:3, Informative)
> other things) then a native browser
Excuse me? What part of gecko is "not native"? The fact that it does not use native widgets for form controls? That's because there was in fact no way to do this. Notice that Safari is either a) getting changes to the core OS widget set made or b) suffering from bugs (see hyatt's recent blog entries) due to its use of native widgets.
Gecko did not have the luxury of being able to make the OS makers modify the OS widget set, unfortunately. But the native widgets issue is not one that most users would even notice, imo... (Note that this is for the web page rendering, not for the browser UI -- the latter is a separate kettle of fish, and Camino is a Gecko-based browser with a native UI.)
Moz at work (Score:3, Informative)
I was in a similar situation to you until a friendly slashdotter told me that that Firebird can be run on Windows from the executable [mozilla.org]. If you have sufficient permissions to copy something from a CD onto your desktop, you can run Moz at work -- just run MozillaFirebird.exe It automatically copies over all your IE bookmarks as well : )
Give it a try, you'll be pleasntly surprised.