Netscape Users Rejoice 200
Well, SatireWire has a new story about "the last 14 remaining Netscape users" rejoicing over Netscape. It's pretty biting, but funny as hell.
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Netscape Users Rejoice
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Software production is assumed to be a line function, but it is run like a staff function. -- Paul Licker
Downgrade today! (Score:1)
Re:Contact Information (Score:1)
Mozilla kicks ass!! (Score:2)
Seriously, I'm using it all the time now. It's VERY fast, VERY stable, doesn't have much extra crap, is relatively small to download, and has GREAT standards compliance.
Any of the 12 remaining Netscape users out there really ought ot check out the latest daily builds. When Mozilla releases next it'll be browser nirvana for Unix users everywhere.
As for the statistics, about 2 of my friends use IE. Most still use NS 4.x just becuase it's what they're used to. Of coures all of my *nix friends and co-workers use NS (or mozilla) because it's their only choice.
Once again, mozilla is awesome now. The speed improvements are vast, getting a good theme that doesn't do too much is also key. (native.windows is the least distracting/fastest for me. I know it looks like IE, but who cares?)
I've got good encryption, excellent rendering, great speed, java, flash, and great XML features. Not to mention Mozilla runs on (or will be released soon) every OS/architecture I can throw at it.
I'd like to see Microsoft IE do that.
Re:The Story (Score:2)
On win2k I have had the same browser instance up for weeks. Never had IE 5.5 crash once on me.
I have tried mozilla many many many times. The last time I got ahold of what I thought was a very high quality mozilla build. Did hotmail, did SSL, did java, everything looks great. So I order a plane ticket online at expedia - It crashed as soon as I hit the 'Buy this ticket' button. No more chances for mozilla/netscape.
-josh
Re:a rant on stuff (Score:2)
Which brings me to my point: What the hell?!? These two so called WC3 complaint browsers won't display code created in a WC3 compliant editor the same way!
The HTML+CSS1 standards never intended to provide a pixel-perfect presentation layer. If you want that use Postscript, PDF, or XML+XSL+FO.
What use are these bloody standards?
So that user agents (which can include non-graphical browsers and search engines) can interpret pages and render them appropriately. Despite what you seem to think, this doesn't imply that the same page should render in the same way for different people. Even the CSS specification refers to CSS styles as suggestions.
Re:If not netscape, what then? (Score:1)
Strange,
I'm using Galeon 0.8.1, and it runs java applets, uses SSL, and has bookmarks; in fact, if I thumb-click (equivalent to middle-click), it brings up a bookmark context menu - there's even a bookmark editor in the menubar.
Go spread your FUD elsewhere.
Yeah, it's Dead for Win (Score:1)
Maybe W3C is the problem... (Score:1)
Not to be an apologist for a crappy web browser or anything, but the internet is a pretty honkin' big thing to write a single application for. Yeah, yeah, N6 is a suite, but is it a suite in the same way that MS Office or KOffice etc. is a suite? Not really. We expect a browser to be able to handle all sorts of web page types and scripting and embedded applets, etc., whereas for a traditional office suite we allow for different applications for different office file types...
Problem is, you can set your Mime-types or registry (or whatever) depending on what sort of office application you want to have deal with a given file type, but the nature of a web page is that all sorts of stuff can be embedded within, and one application has to be the conduit of all these things.
Basically, my question is this: Shouldn't we be giving N6 a little latitude for trying to accomplish the near impossible? Yeah, 2 years is a long time to wait, but standards were (and are still) constantly being updated. It'd a tough thing to keep up with, no?
In short: This is a lot of tough talk coming from a community that's produced 37,000 different text editors. Of course, I can't even do THAT much, so maybe I should keep quiet...
My Good Experience With Netscape 6 (Score:2)
At first, yes, there were a few crashes. Yes, it was slower in Linux than Windows 98 and Windows 2000 (of course, 4.x was like that as well). Yes, it loaded slower than IE. Then again, N6 doesn't have the advantage of being preloaded with the OS.
Weeks later and I'm used to it. The quirks, those I can put up with. I mean, shit, if you use open source software on a regular basis - especially the 99% of OSS that is labeled pre-release/alpha or even 'production', then you know that there will be quirks. You live with them or you contribute back to the project and help them go away.
After the initial crashes, I've had: NONE. NO problems with sites that I visit. Okay, maybe a few, but they were using layers in a way that was only intended by MS.
Bottom line: shut the hell up. Go use IE, Konqie, MozNightly, Mozilla-based browsers, old NS, Lynx, wget, etc. For now, I'm sticking with N6. It works fine with me and is actually fast on my machine after the initial load. I'm personally getting a little sick of the negativity. People use it for a total of 30 seconds (okay, not everyone, but I get the feeling that most installed it, looked at it then deleted or uninstalled it) and pass judgement on it. I have reason to believe that most of these people probably use IE themselves.
Bah - who cares. I use what I want and you use what you want. Go away.
Re:The Problem is Gtk and Gdk (Score:1)
Re:Biting Satire? The article is LAME. (Score:1)
Mozilla was designed from the ground up to be cross-platform and non-coupled. Without XPFE, you wouldn't be able to create cross-platform applications/interfaces in pure XBL, but that functionality is used in Netscape 6 itself.
Why does everyone here need to make the mistake that if someone has implemented X using the Mozilla platform, you assume that it is built into the main distribution of Mozilla and it took time away from a Netscape Engineer's schedule?
Re:My Good Experience With Netscape 6 (Score:1)
Re:Oh, the Humanity! (Score:1)
I concur. For small LAN's where shelling out a lot of time or $$ for standardized webserver+email client setups (e.g. MS Outlook + MS IE) is pointless, Netscape still provides a rather simple option. Indeed, most department-level LAN's at my school use Netscape on their (NT) workstations, primarily because Netscape profiles can be stored at a central location, greatly reducing the size of NT roaming profiles to be copied to and fro (while IE+Outlook will store dozens of MB's of webcache and mail in the actual profile).
Re:Some real stats (Score:1)
Who ever it is I know they are reading slashdot. Fess up.
Re:Numbers slightly skewed... (Score:3)
The whole point of Slashdot is that it's a community, and sometimes that community finds something interesting to talk to that doesn't quite fit under the topic of the story. But when we can't start up such a discussion, thanks to "Offtopic" moderations, we resort to stupid jokes.
And now, so this post doesn't get sent down to -1, Offtopic, here's a stupid joke:
(apologies to Monty Python)
Every vote is sacred
Every vote is great
If a vote is wasted
Gore gets quite irate
--
We demand a recount! (Score:4)
We'll take every legal step to make sure that every browser is counted. Even in those cases where the people clicked on the "download netscape 6" button, but due to a faulty mechanism, didn't press their mouse button down far enough, thus producing a soft "cluck" instead of a firm "click". We will have all mice inspected for "clucks", and we'll make sure these count as well! It's the intention that counts!! Long live democracy!
Re:Some real stats (Score:2)
Woo Hoo! Still hanging on...
Re:Not that far fetched. (Score:1)
For all of you that think KDE is unstable, which it was a bit for 2.0, wait for 2.1. Since the release of 2.0, every bug that I know of has been fixed and many new features have been added.
Matt Newell
unfortunately (Score:4)
Re:Well, what are the real numbers? (Score:1)
Re:N.S. would have to walk on water. (Score:1)
4 years until the next major upgrade didn't really help either. Considering, it's actually quite amazing that they still have 20% of the end user market.
--
Re:Numbers slightly skewed... (Score:1)
/me claps slowly and deliberately
Re:What's up with all this netscape/mozilla bashin (Score:1)
Re:Oh, the Humanity! (Score:1)
Re:Oh, the Humanity! (Score:1)
I've seen/done very complex enterprise applications with Javascript/VBscript and ActiveX objects. Or "non-developed" applications with very complex string pattern matching for automatic text formatting using _only_ javascript regular expressions. And they only work with IE.
DISCLAIMER: I am a C++ developer, not a web developer but sometime I have fun with "web no-developing".
--ricardo
Re:Numbers slightly skewed... (Score:2)
I don't care much about karma, but i do want to promote the link in my sig, so call it karma whoring if you will, but apparantly -somebody- must have found my post funny. They get their laughs, my project gets attention.
I certainly would prefer a Slashdot moderation group with a better sense of humor, but in the meantime, i'm not going to fight the system. I'm going to play the system and get attention for my crappy little software project.
--
Re:Well, what are the real numbers? (Score:2)
I've seen all kinds of numbers, from IE having 98% of the browser share, to Netscape having 10% of the browser share. Any idea what Netscape's browser share is like, especially with the release of Netscape 6?
Windows + MacOS is installed on much less than 98% of desktop boxes, so MSIE market share theoretically can't be 98%.
Re:kinda funny, but... (Score:1)
on the stability side, i've actually had IE5.5 die 3 times this month. that's 2 more than i usually get in a month. shock, horror
Wouldn't have saved them in 1997 either (Score:2)
Re:The Story (Score:1)
People wonder why I favor my M$ box for surfing
Re:Where each browser has won (Score:2)
i agree with the "this may change"; several new alternatives have popped up recently that in the near fututre might become really good. The best has to be BrowseX (www.browsex.com); it's written entirely in tcl, very light-weight, and supports most commonly used internet standards (no CSS, no Java, but animated GIFs and they don't take a huge chunk of load, images, tables are good) the only problems with it at this time are: you can't compile it (it's under the Artistic license, but the build process is too convoluted; a binary is available for Linux/x86 and Windows), and it can't load pages very dynamically. There are occaisional crashes too, but no more than in Mozilla, I'm sure (it freezes instead of crashing). But I think it's much farther ahead than other browsers like Opera and skipstone.
Not that far fetched. (Score:1)
Mozilla will have a release version soon and I expect that will more likely be the default browser of the next generation on Linux distributions. Many are using Konqueror for all their browsing needs.
There will soon be no reason to use Netscape.
Re:Netscape 0.9 (Browser Emulation) (Score:2)
No it doesn't, at least not in the NCSA X Mosaic [uiuc.edu] 2.7b5 that I have open at the moment. Of course, it's hardly Mosaic's fault since Slashdot specifies the stunningly readable black text on a black background in its <body> tag while Mosaic predates the table bgcolor that Slashdot uses to make things readable for newer browsers.
Here is your Java and SSL! (Score:2)
Java (Netscape 6 Java plugin) http://home.netscape.com/plugins/jvm.html?mimetyp
Have fun!
Netscape 0.9 (Score:5)
N.S. would have to walk on water. (Score:2)
Please don't forget how hard is to convince the average guy or gal to take the time and effort to download a 30Meg file, and install it, when the current browser s/he has works well enough.
Netscape was steam rolled because it didn't have a critical advantage a certain operating system company had. Even battered, bruised, business model in shatters, and under new management, netscape is still in there scraping. I say, more power to them, because modzilla.org (with much help from Netscape) _is_ now winning the battle the best browser.
(posted using mozilla M18)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Well, what are the real numbers? (Score:2)
Where each browser has won (Score:2)
- Home users
- Macintosh users in all areas (it's simply the better browser of the two, and has been bundled ever since Microsoft sunk millions into Apple)
Where Netscape has won:
- College campuses (where most network kit distributions come with instructions for Netscape, not Explorer). Also, most college labs have Netscape as their primary browser
- Linux users (there's no other suitable choices for browsers w/GUI, although this may change in the next few months)
- Developers who still must test their sites with both browsers
Unfortunately for Netscape/Mozilla fans, there's a far greater number of home users than students/Linux users. And most developers I've worked with (including the last site I interned at) were beginning to focus much more on IE.
By the way, the last stats at refer-it.com (before I left my internship):
- Close to 80% IE
- About 10% Netscape
- Remaining 10% Web TV, Opera, Lynx, etc.
Only Time will tell (Score:1)
Re:Not that far fetched. (Score:1)
In late `99 I finally got into Linux. And used Netscape, briefly. Until Mozilla. I've used Mozilla as my main browser since M16. It's already better than Netscape, and the post-M18 nightlies are FAR better than the so-called "final" Netscape 6.
Mozilla is going to be the best browser on the market when it is final.
Re:Netscape 0.9 (Browser Emulation) (Score:1)
Re:Numbers slightly skewed... (Score:2)
Then, i had to be on two dates at the same time, and as i was rushing between them, i got stuck in an elevator with a pregnant woman. It was zany.
By the way, are you the same anonymous coward from the other two posts?
--
Re:Well, what are the real numbers? (Score:1)
I use Netscape 4.75 all day, every day on Linux and NT. It rarely crashes on me, and it displays most pages the same as IE.
There is just something about IE that rubs me the wrong way. I only use it when I have to (for testing purposes).
I like Mozilla a lot, and in the last few months it has seen a great deal of improvement. Just the fact that it runs on so many platforms makes it superior. IE will never run on Linux (BSD, beos, etc), so it will ultimately lose out to Mozilla. Especially since these platforms are invading the desktop market.
domc
Re:HotJava? (Score:1)
Haahahaaa... You just made my day!
I have to say that I recently downloaded version 3.0 and it kicks ass all over version 1.02.....
Egad, I hope you're joking... Anytime I've touched HJ under Solaris (2.6, 2.7 under CDE) I've felt somehow sullied by the experience. No wonder why Sun bundles Netscape CDs with Solaris.. In fact, at one point, you couldn't access Sunsolve with HotJava (or was it java.sun.com?) which I felt approached the acme of Sun irony...
Your Working Boy,
Re:The Problem is Gtk and Gdk (Score:2)
Re:Well, what are the real numbers? (Score:1)
I wasn't aware of the issue back in 1997 - but I quite agree with you; that was no better. However, today it is Microsoft's market share which is high enough to endanger the w3c standard, and so it is them I am complaining about.
Re:Yes it's interesting (Score:2)
That's like me complaining that Netscape 3 has some problem, going to another browser, and complaining the browser still has the problem ever since I left.
Mosaic 0.9b is actually Mozilla!?! (Score:2)
I'm so confused...
-B
Re:Where each browser has won (Score:2)
Ahhhhh! They took my browser away! (Score:1)
Still, never unerestimate the power of PHB. Last week the IT boys sent me a nice little "system upgrade" for MSIE 5.01. The stupid thing was manditory and took 20 minutes to run. I started to worry when I saw a message, "migrating bookmarks." I don't think it was nice enought to move my address book which was useless because nothing but the browser can use the proxy (no command line stuff works, nor netscpes little mail client). In anycase, Netscape vanished. Yes, you too can be standardized. Nope, I'm not going to bother reloading Netscape. Deleting it was a big enough hint.
I hate IE! It will not remember the things I tell it to do, like not display pictures or execute scripts. I suppose it will do any old active X thingy, super secure! Everytime I use it, I'm forced to endure whatever big ugly blinking banner add marketoids decide it would be good to waste bandwith on. You can't imagine how ugly our own internal page is. It feels so nice to come home and browse without it.
I've also learned to hate Outlook. It took some time, because I really wanted to see something cool in it. The anoyances, typical of MS interface design, far outweigh any benifits that mess has to offer. Security and privacy? Ha!
Thank God Windows is dying the miserable death it deserves.
Re:Browser Archive! (Score:2)
Anyone notice how Netscape 0.9 didn't even bother to display an error message when it couldn't load a site?
Re:Sad Really (Score:1)
Other than some trivial issues with XML and custom DTDs, yes, I believe so.
Mostly. Check the changelog [htmlhelp.com] for details.
Then the sites aren't to spec.
Re:I have too much karma,... (Score:1)
Speaking of which, when will I be able view posts by how they were moderated? Two things I often want to be able to do are "Show me all the posts moderated as funny." And, "Show me all the posts that have been moderated up, because the default moderation level 2 post is often abused."
KDE works (Score:1)
Konquerer, seems to work just fine, but I'm not sure how to make it stop displaying those nice little java banner adds that so many people demand. My version of KDE is older, so things might be better.
There are at least two text based browsers, but they are kind of a pain with so many websites using pictures as part of their navigation, blah. You can use Lynx, and I'm told Emacs.
It has been said that no editor is complete until it can browse the web. I say now browser is complete until it can be used as a text editor! Try Abi Word, who's native format is SGML. Ahhh!
Re:Where each browser has won (Score:2)
You stopped reading at that point, right? (Score:3)
any point in users switching from Internet Explorer to Netscape (at least in their minds).
However, with this development platform flexability, soon Netscape will be MORE then just
a browser to the end user, it will be something that needs to be installed for OTHER
cool applications to run as well (Think Forumzilla, except something that all users consider cool. Maybe a XUL front end to a MUD or something like that). Add that to the most standards compliant browser, and users will WANT to switch. At work, lots of "Internal web applications" can be coded in XUL instead, and the business will want to switch back to Netscape. If you compete against Microsoft in the EXACT SAME NICHE (Windows only browser only), you will LOSE (Thanks to user apathy). You need to take a larger approach.
And this is where "Shoved out the door two months early" comes in to play. I can pretty much assure you that by the time Mozilla 1.0 comes out (in about 6 months or less), Mozilla *will* be fun for the user to use. It will be perfect for usage as "just a browser". It will never satisfy users that want Netscape to be Lynx, and those users should just go use Lynx.
And you won't be walking down the street handing out CD's that say "Cross-Platform XUL application", they'll say "ReallyCoolDistributedNetworkGame 1.0 (Needs Netscape 6.x to run)", just like web page users don't say "Hey, cool, look at that use of the DOM and Dynamic HTML", they say "Hey, cool! Look at the hopping bunny!". Making something a XUL, XML and XSL based platform allows developers to DO what the user wants. And what the user wants will change and GROW in the future. And having a better flexable architecture will allow Netscape to fill those needs easily while Microsoft will struggle.
Re:The Story (Score:2)
Re:Oh, the Humanity! (Score:1)
Re:Numbers slightly skewed... (Score:1)
The entire concept of negative moderation sucks.
Re:Oh, the Humanity! (Score:2)
The web chache shouldn't be be copied around. The NT server we have at work took forever to login/logout because of this excess. It can be fixed using the policy editor on the NT server.
in your NTconfig.pol:
under "Windows NT Users Profiles",
check "exclude dirs in roaming profile"
fill in the stuff you don't what to be copied in the text box (Temporary Internet Files;Temp for example)
Makes things run alot smoother.
Also, Netscape deleted my home directory on our NT server once. It somehow got confused that my home dir was the cache, and so deleted it. The odd this is that it didn't do that with a any normal NT workstation, but only did with a NT workstation that had AFS installed. Wierd.
Never really trusted Netscape browsers since. The way Netscape handles multiple profiles can be pretty buggy too.
Biting Satire? The article is LAME. (Score:5)
If we're just going to base everything on what was released to the market first, then ALL companies might as well just release TOTAL crap to the customer as quickly as possible. I thought that we were a more knowledgable community and we wanted better quality software. We're entering a new era of software construction, where we can write better quality and more maintainable code. But to take advantage of that, we're going to have to re-write a lot of code, code that was built in the 80's and 90's hackers ethic. RE-WRITES TAKE TIME.
There are people here who say that they wished Netscape had released a Netscape 5 with improvements in a short period of time. Well, they actually did that, only they were more honest and called it 4.5. Without a re-write, any future Netscape browser wouldn't have gotten much better than 4.x, and probably would have gotten worse. The code base was ANCIENT. It was written in another era. So 6 months after they started working on Netscape 5 (using the old code-base), they scrapped it, and started the re-write. I tried out "Mozilla Classic" (had a debian package or two), and it wasn't much better than 4.x. This decision was made in November.
The year of 1999 was basically spent in re-write and architecture land. Some components were re-written multiple times. At this time, the browser wasn't "dogfood", it wasn't really usable by anyone without a huge amount of struggle. Some people here still think Mozilla is like that. At the end of 1999, Mozilla started driving to dogfood, and by February of 2000, it was at least dogfood (I used it for my daily browsing, although some times it was very very slow). That's the point where I started seeing constant and steady improvement on each and every build. (With a few regressions on the day or two after the milestone). Then another rapid increase in quality began around the end of May. 2000. Then another burst of polishing through all of August. If Netscape had given us 2 more months like August before clamping down, I think Netscape 6 would have been significantly better. If a significant bug got fixed after August, it tended to not get into either the trunk or the branch.
around July and August is when end-user/programmers started to swarm in to Mozilla as outside contributors, as Mozilla had finally reached what JWZ had said "A user could add a patch to the browser and have a browser + his patch." It would have been very exciting if we could have had two more months like that. We'll have them again in January and February, as everyone recovers from the holidays, and the Netscape employees come back from their vacations.
Mozilla is MORE then just a browser. I'm sure there are a lot of people who kept crying out that that's ALL it should have been, but that's their typical small-minded thinking, and it's THAT fact that will eventually get Netscape on to end-user computers, even if they already have Internet Explorer on them. I don't think you can write a completely cross-platform XUL application using Internet Explorer technology.
I'm sick of the anti-mozilla bias that has been fostered on Slashdot, propagated by short-sighted, impatient and ignorant people, and i'm dismayed at CmdrTaco et al continuing this trend with stories like this, especially when they are misrepresented in the opening comments. I certainly don't know of any other full-featured commercial quality browsers that I can get the full source code to.
I completely fail to see what CmdrTaco sees as "funny as hell" about this article. Is it the "14" users statement that does it for him? Is it the constant assertion that once people switch to Internet Explorer that they'll never switch back? Is it the implication that only Netscape users would want to try the New Netscape? Or is it the comparison of Netscape with Apple as companies who didn't fill the general market niches at the given time, and therefore "deserve to die"? Here's a hint: For something to be considered good satire, it has to blast BOTH sides (if there are clear partisan sides), it has to frame it in a new, unexpected light/situation that is halfway believable(probably framing it in the structure of something else that is established), and most of the facts (or the behaviours if we're looking closely at a specific person) have to be generally undisputed. Oh, and a bit of intelligence helps. This article fills NONE of those criteria. It is *extremely* one-sided, doesn't blast Microsoft at all for the obvious defects, the situation is completely unrealistic (a person saying that if his company had released something 3 years ago, it would have had a chance, but it wasn't, so it doesn't? Yeah right!), and most of the facts are under dispute. And finally it does not sound intelligent, the tone/ideas in this article are extremely childish (*14* users? Why not just say *3*? Hell, if you're going to completely underestimate/state the Netscape base, why not say *0.0001*?) and short-sighted (Hmm, so when someone has the majority of marketshare in one area, they NEVER lose it, even when someone comes out with a better product? I think Lotus and IBM would strongly disagree with you.). At best, this is highly partisian humour, and something that only Microsoft employees/lovers would laugh at, or people who are extremely EXTREMELY bitter at Netscape.
All this article has done is repeat the mantra "Ship the browser NOW NOW NOW NOW or you'll be irrelevant!", only they've done it AFTER Netscape SHIPPED THE DAMN BROWSER (A bit too early to satisfy you whiners), which means they are flogging a dead horse. Something is biting if it is undisputably true, which this isn't. This piece isn't even relevant. And it doesn't even consider any other platform besides Windows! I can ASSURE you that there isn't a large number of people on Linux switching to Internet Explorer. CmdrTaco, have you COMPLETELY forgotten your original demographic?
Re:Well, what are the real numbers? (Score:2)
38% of the hits to our site come from Netscape.
Oh, the Humanity! (Score:2)
Actually, what I really mean to say is that I don't want to see Mozilla go away. Netscape corporation, to me, is just the "shopping" buttons cluttering my toolbar. Netscape can die, if it wants, but I want Mozilla running on my desktop and webpad of the future, not IE.
In the United Federation if IBM (Score:2)
amiga? (Score:2)
Re:Well, what are the real numbers? (Score:3)
Re:Mozilla kicks ass!! (Score:2)
No, it's not. I'm actually using it now to type this response and it is garbage. It's slow (very very slow), it does a lousy job of displaying HTML (well, what do you want from a browser for Christ's sake?) and it took hours to download.
The beta3 of Opera I have on this machine beats Netscape6 on every count and they don't have the nerve to claim it's a release yet!
TWW
Re:Not that far fetched. (Score:2)
I suspect that most Linux users didn't have it preloaded...sure, VA Linux, Penguin Computing et al. are probably getting a few sales, but most of us are either building our own boxen or blowing Win9x off of a machine that had that preinstalled. (Put me in the former category...the only prebuilt x86 box I've ever had is an IBM PC/XT given to me a few years ago in non-working order. It now has DR DOS 6.0 and the MS Networking client installed so it can talk to my Samba server.)
When I install Linux on a machine, Netscrape doesn't get on there at all. On the last few Linux installs I've done, one of the things I've done is make sure Netscrape is deselected for installation. I don't want it on any computer that I have to use, whether under Linux or Win9x/NT/2K. On my home workstation, I have VMware and Win98 installed so I can run IE (which I'm using right now to punch this in). At work, I recently put SuSE 7.0 on a spare partition. When the system agrees to talk to the proxy (an NT4 server running MS Proxy Server 2, which sometimes crashes when Dante tries to talk to it), Konqueror looks like it ought to be a decent Linux-native browser, even if it's not out of beta yet. I've even been known to use Lynx from time to time (we don't need no steenking graphics!).
Nearly anything is better than taking AOHell's blue pill known as Netscape.
Some real stats (Score:5)
85.6% Internet Explorer
12.0% Netscape
01.2% "Netscape Compatible" browsers
00.2% Opera
00.07% WebTV
In my experience, largely "geeky" websites see huge amounts of netscape users. Our breakdown by OS:
93.35% Windows
03.22% Macintosh
01.80% Unknown (browser doesn't report OS)
01.38% Unix variants
00.07% WebTV
00.01% BeOS
00.004% OS/2
00.003% RISC OS
00.002% Amiga
00.0002% OpenVMS
Since it may be of interest to people here, here's the Unix breakdown:
79.18% Linux
07.28% FreeBSD
04.19% SunOS
03.85% Other Unix variants
01.94% OpenBSD
01.85% IRIX
00.61% OSF1
00.51% HP-UX
00.30% NetBSD
00.26% AIX
00.0002% BSD/OS
The Unix/Linux users seem kind of high, but it may be due to the Linux Girls Gallery [stileproject.com] getting linked everywhere.
-- Kevin
(hoping this won't be considered spam, but rather info that I keep getting asked)
Re:My Good Experience With Netscape 6 (Score:3)
On a P100 (which runs NS4.7 and Opera4-beta3 just fine, speed-wise) there is a small but detectable delay between typing a character into a textbox and it appearing on the screen, and cursor movement is like treacle. Pages as "complex" as /. take an age to render. This is not a good browser. It is not even a poor browser.
At the moment Netscape 6 is the worst browser available for Linux that is not labeled "beta". In fact it's worse than many that are.
TWW (using NS6)
Re:Biting Satire? The article is LAME. (Score:2)
Its nothing new. Some people put Calvin pissing on {Ford/GM} stickers on their trucks. Some people won't drink Pepsi, only Coke. Some people swear Marlboro cigarettes taste better.
In our consumerist culture, people define themselves by what they consume, and people choose dominant brands to avoid marginalizing themselves. Software is no different.
Re:Well, what are the real numbers? (Score:2)
HotJava? (Score:2)
I have to say that I recently downloaded version 3.0 and it kicks ass all over version 1.02.....
Who needs Netscape when there's Opera? (Score:2)
Of course, it won't be free, but it will be worth the money.
More info: www.opera.com
Mozilla is okay, but it's just unbearably slow. So is Netscape, of course. I can actually say as a Linux user that I wish I had the option of having an enterprise-quality browser built into
Re:Oh, the Humanity! (Score:2)
I can't wait for netscape to be dead and gone. Too many development headaches to make those 14 people happy.
When mozilla is as robust and _not broken_ as IE, maybe then will I feel there is room in this world for more than one browser.
Microsoft, regardless of how they did it, did it right. I like using their browser, and I like developing for it.
Re:Well, what are the real numbers? (Score:2)
Internet Exploder: 80.85%
-MSIE 5.5: 18.90%
-MSIE 5.0: 49.30%
-MSIE 4.0: 10.70%
Netscape Navigator: 16.13%
-Mozilla/6.0: 0.00% (25 hits)
-Mozilla/4.7: 7.10%
-Mozilla/4.6: 1.54%
-Mozilla/4.5: 2.32%
-Mozilla/4.0: 2.50%
Sad to see these numbers. I'm hoping that Mozilla will start to gain popularity once it is released.
domc
You'll laugh on the other side of your face . . . (Score:2)
Funny ha-ha. Sure. But where's the viable Linux and *NIX browser if there's no Netscape?
Don't get confused ny Mozilla. Mozilla is 46 guys paid by Sun/Netscape. Netscape and Mozilla are siamese twins.
What we have to have happen is for Netscape to get its act together.
a rant on stuff (Score:5)
<rant>
Ok. As a web developer I want to bitch about the state of browsers.
Call me uninformed, stupid or whatever you will, but after having played with Netscape 6, IE 5.5, Opera 4 and Netscape 4.72. I can't imagine that there's anything that can be done to make my life easier as a developer.
For a long time, and I've said this on Slashdot before, my main problem with Opera 4 and Netscape 6 is that they don't freaking display layers the same and NONE of them support JavaScript the same way. Using JavaScript in all four of these browsers is pretty much a lost cause as far as I'm concerned. You may as well learn four distinct languages.
Now ok, as a Developer I do write a lot of stuff by hand. But lets face the fact, using an editor like DreamWeaver make a hell of a lot more since as you can hammer something out reasonably quickly with typically good code.
As a side note, I just got my paws on DreamWeaver 4, which claims to be WC3 compliant. So, in theory anything I write in DreamWeaver 4 should work at least as well in Opera 4 and in Netscape 6. Right? No!
Here's my several hour story about disappointment. I've been working for several monts on a site that makes creative use of layers on the opening page. (I'd show you, but it's not live yet.) This first page was originally created in DreamWeaver 3 using DreamWeaver 3 behaviors to show and hide layers as necessary. Worked great, but only in Netscape 4.7x and IE 5+. Netscape 6 and Opera 4 wouldn't display the layers when it was supposed to. This boiled down to something I never took the time to figure out in the actual JavaScript of the DreamWeaver 3 behavior.
Now the other day I got a copy of DreamWeaver 4. Macromedia claims that it's WC3 complaint. Excellent, this is the solution to my problem. I'll simply redo the page real quick in DreamWeaver 4 and it should work in all these browsers. Much to my surprise the JavaScript worked! My problem though is that the browsers seem to handle the layer and other such tags differently. In Netscape 6 the entire layer is shifted a pixel up so it doesn't align where it's supposed to. Other than that, it worked fine. In opera the link in the image map on the image in the layer wouldn't work. It wouldn't do a think. I tried setting on onClick to load the next page with JavaScript. No luck. IE and Netscape 4.72 seemed to work fine.
Which brings me to my point: What the hell?!? These two so called WC3 complaint browsers won't display code created in a WC3 compliant editor the same way! What use are these bloody standards? I understand they're complicated as hell and that I sure couldn't do the work, but it seems to me that there's truly something lacking for all of the options.
So here's my proposal: Let's get all of the major and some of the minor browsers companies together and (by some miracle) get them all to agree on standards or something. Then make THEM be the consortium that creates the standards. Then if browsers like IE want to implement other proprietary features, then that's FINE. (as long as they don't go calling them standard.)
</rant>
But it's past my bedtime so I must go sleep. Bye now.
Doug
Re:Oh, the Humanity! (Score:2)
Woohoo! Yet another webmonkey who thinks that HTML is programming. Sure, it's worthwhile, but you get nowhere trying to impress the geek crowd by calling it development.
Re:The Story (Score:2)
actually... it rarely does... on a Win2K box? over four months of solid use without a single crash. NS6 crashed twice when I was checking it out...
-rt-
Re:Biting Satire? The article is LAME. (Score:2)
Not to drift off-topic here, but Marlboro cigarettes really do taste better (I smoke them). Not only that, but anybody who's a Marlboro smoker will have a tough time switching to anything else, because of all the crap [philipmorrisusa.com] they put in them. Marlboros are the only cigarettes that will satisfy my craving because, not only am I addicted to the nicotine, I'm addicted to the other shit they put in there too.
--
Re:My Good Experience With Netscape 6 (Score:2)
My dad had this problem... I fixed it by turning off autocomplete (which is what was crashing it). Only in a Microsoft product could something like autocomplete freeze up a whole system, eh?
--
Numbers slightly skewed... (Score:5)
--
Re:a rant on stuff (Score:2)
Anyhow:
- Mozilla, Internet Explorer 5 = document.getElementById('quack').style
- Internet Explorer 4 =
document.all.quack.style
- Netscape Navigator 4 =
document.layers.quack
The getElementById and getElementByName functions are defined by the W3C document ECMA bindings for DOM2. Look it up.
Dreamweaver authors should have researched better before making such claims.
Re:a rant on stuff (Score:2)
Browser Archive! (Score:4)
Re:Biting Satire? The article is LAME. (Score:3)
Yeah. Lookit all those stupid users who wanna surf the web. Don't realise how boring that would have been to code, and how non-'leet and non-resume-building it would have been to write a web browser?
Just 'cuz it's an XUL, XML, XSL-based development platform or whatever the fuck you wanna call it today, doesn't mean it's any use if it doesn't do what the user wants.
I know you're gonna mod me for flamebait for saying that. But I'm gonna keep on saying it until the Netscrape engineers wake up and get the point, which is this:
Stop thinking about what you think is fun to code and start thinking about what the user thinks will be fun to use.
> I don't think you can write a completely cross-platform XUL application using Internet Explorer technology
No, but you can sure as hell write a web browser for 90% of the installed base of PCs.
When I can walk down the street and hand out CDs labelled "Cross-platform XUL application!" and people rush up to me saying "Wow, that's what I need instead of a web browser", I'll concede the point that Netscape's a Good Thing.
As long as they say "Yeah, but can I use it to view web pages", I'll keep flaming.
Re:Well, what are the real numbers? (Score:2)
No, but I'd like to shear the web-DUH-signers who have made the very concept of "browser share" necessary. What was wrong with writing proper HTML in the first place, you clueless nits!
kinda funny, but... (Score:2)
1) Use the back button too fast and it goes boom.
2) The mail agent seems to get confused after a bunch of folders get created, and after some mail gets mails diverted to them -- it simply stopped letting me create new folders until the next session.
3) Launches a bunch (16?) "java_vm"s that show in the process table.
4) Won't load newsgroup names. My ISP has a 2MB (or so) list of newsgroups, and I have yet to see the newsgroup downloader in NS6 successfully d/l it. It always crashes. At least 4.75 showed you the groups it *did get*, as I recall.
5) The scrollbars seem to get confused if the mouse is refocused while scrolling. The states seem to get hosed between window resizing and scrolling sometimes.
6) Window rendering gets ugly when the page is loading and you move it around.
It does feel a bit slow, especially the first time scrolling down a large web page -- like a slashdot article with a lot of responses (viewed flat). After getting to the bottom once, it scrolls fairly fast.
IE suffers from a similar list of oddities, but is faster starting and "in general" has more of a quality feel.
Of course, the use of Microsoft products by a zealot like me is completely out of the question, so my big hope is that netscape or staroffice will do something to improve the browsing situation. I'm not a KDE/QT person, so Konquerer and Opera are not an option (for me) either.
I wish the product was better, but I also wish I could get a decent electric car that would go a couple hundred miles and recharge in four hours...it just ain't happening yet, ya know?
There was a time when there was no accelerated OGL on Linux; but I bought q3a for Linux and it runs better than any game I've ever played. 40 fps (consistently) on an old voodoo banshee 400 mhz K62 machine is not bad.
Things will improve. Actually, even if they get
the above items fixed, I'll still hold my nose over the geegaws. I don't like all the geegaws in NS6.
This is only a test (Score:2)
Fire up one of the above and browse normally until a crash happens -- move to the next one, and so on.....I am none to happy to report that the majority of my browsing is still happening with the "old workhorse" NS 4.7x..
I don't know -- maybe the plethora of new browsers is just a clever way of saying: "See NS 4.7x is not so bad after all suckers!"
Re:This is only a test (Score:2)
47.5% Slashdot Pure(52.5% Corrupt)
I like Netscape 6.0 (Score:2)
I like Netscape 6.0. I think it's a pretty slick browser for a complete rewrite, a bold move on the part of Netscape, and a very promising platform for web development. Kudos to the Mozilla team!
As for slick, I think the user interface is very smooth and easy to use albiet a little more polish could be applied to make it even better. I've had no problems with the UI at all.
A bold move because Netscape has finally brought their browser up to the state of standards compliance it should have had long ago and that it has largely embraced the Open Source movement to do it - ensuring Netscape's ability to keep abreast of new developments and to quickly adopt W3C standards.
And, a very promising web development platform in that these new technologies and standards are going to allow some pretty interesting things to be done with the browser; bringing Netscape's original vison of the browser as a vehicle upon which advanced internetworked and crossplatform applications can be constructed.
Re:Where each browser has won (Score:2)
Re:Mozilla kicks ass!! (Score:2)
Obviously you're one of those stupid users who Just Doesn't Get It. Don't you know that you didn't want to display HTML, but that you really wanted an XML, XUL, XSL, and otherwise buzzword-compliant development platform?
It's more than a browser! If you can't see that, you're obviously too dumb to appreciate just how awesomely k00l the Netscape engineers are. Serves you right.
(Before you moderate me as Flamebait -- look up "satire". I'm merely paraphrasing the arguments that every pro-Netscape poster has made in this thread when confronted with the reality that the thing they produced, however cool, sucks donkey ass as a web browser.)
Sad Really (Score:2)
I really hate the evil empire, really.
and yet here Netscape goes and releases a browser that is buggy (I can't access certain web pages, among other things), and is missing certain enterprise level features that are essential to widespread adoption.
it's just a bit too little a bit too late
too bad AOL can't or won't give up that marketing agreement with Microsoft, that puts AOL in every winblows machine.
don't get me started, as I am bitter at MS for promoting fourth rate solutions, and for pillaging the best ones they do have
I hope someone puts a stake through Microsoft's heart.
Re:Some real stats (Score:2)
The Linux numbers do surprise me. I don't take the usual estimates (5% of the desktop market!) seriously, but a domain that carries one of the more popular Linux sites only gets 1% Linux hits? It would be very interesting if Slashdot published the OS and browser shares in their hits. They used to, and I can't help thinking they stopped because the results were politically inconvenient. From the SlashNet interview:
[22:10:22] CmdrTaco: the browser stats are the same as always: there is more windows then linux ;)
[22:10:28] CmdrTaco: we don't mirror the internet.
[22:10:36] CmdrTaco: *way* more Linux then the internet as a whole.
[22:10:37] hemos: but consider that linux is only about 3-5% of the internet...
[22:10:41] hemos: and we've got a huge amount of linux users.
[22:10:57] CmdrTaco: We used to post it, but I pulled it for CPU reasons.
[22:11:09] CmdrTaco: it was an expensive query and I didn't really find it interesting cuz it never changed.
An expensive query? I suppose if you update it continuously, but it shouldn't be a huge deal to post numbers once a month. I can't believe Andover doesn't already generate those data.
Re:Biting Satire? The article is LAME. (Score:4)
I can ASSURE you that there isn't a large number of people on Linux switching to Internet Explorer.
Thanks for a solid burst of rationality. Just today I was wondering what did the industry brainwash us into believing about 'platforms'? And 'compatability' and 'market share' and 'industry standard'? There's the famous (?) story told by Nelson Mandela, who upon his release from prison was sitting on a plane to leave RSA. When he saw that the pilot was black, he found himself thinking "God help us, a monkey is flying the plane" (or words to that effect). The racist meme had gotten into even his brain.
I overheard a woman in a store today, walking past the iMacs, saying "everybody's telling me to stick to PCs...." It's like this automatic belief about the 2% Death has really infected our culture. It's like there's something wrong with you if you don't own MS Office, or AutoCad, or Explorer.
It's one thing that 50% of desktops are Win98 or whatever, but what's gotten into people when they turn themselves into walking adverts for the products they own? You don't just buy it, you believe in it... you preach it and send to Hell and Damnation anyone using a different product.
So instead of welcoming diversity (How many species do you want to exterminate today?), we're laughing at these "weak, misguided fools who don't know whats good for them". No, don't be a fool, join the majority, the strong and wholesome (read: 'compatible', 'industry standard', 'works best with', 'market share', 'certified'...) so called 'Leaders'.
Are we just instruments of corporate marketing machines? How many of your opinions (both for and against) Windows, Macs, Be, Linux, Sun etc etc. were put there by the corporations?
We can all find fault with anything. It's too big, it's too small, its too slow, too fast, too bright, too dim, too common, too rare etc. And I think that the parent post was highlighting the "netscape is dead" attitude (I personally downloaded it... it runs... it renders pages... it has developers... therefore it is not dead) which people are swallowing. So we can all find a million "faults" with NS6 that "clearly" show it's inferior. What bias! What utter blindness! What opinionated crap! We've been 'educated' to believe it's dead, and therefore proceed to kill it.
Re:a rant on stuff (Score:2)
Okay, so you'd like to replace the W3C with... the W3C.
You can read more about your new consortium at the W3C Web site [w3.org]. The W3C member list [w3.org] includes all major browser makers and many minor ones, as well as about 375 other organizations.
Numbers slightly skewed... (Score:2)