Comment Netscape, out of the loop? (Score 3) 107
If Netscape releases a browser that has major design flaws in relation to what it supports and how well it supports it then they might as well leave the release be.
For years now, web developers has been forced to produce sites that supports two or more flavors of browsers in order to target the majority of the likely users of their sites.
For e-commerce sites this is not really a choice. You can't say "Let's just support one browser because that's easiest", when that effectively blocks out a huge chunk of your potential customer base.
Neither is it very likely that you can opt to support full DHTML support in two or more platforms simply because you need to write each page specifically for each browser.
The third option is to go for the least common denominator and that is forgetting about all those cool new ways of doing things simply because of the pain in the ass it is to write the code two or three times.
The most likely outcome if Netscape releases a sub-standard browser is that quite a few sites will stop paying the cost to support two browsers and go for one. If Netscape hopes the sites will go for Netscape then I think they will be hugely disappointed.
IE has been out there, is working (well enough, bugs yes, but generally it works), and does not appear to be disappearing anytime soon.
I think there comes a time when enough is enough. If Netscape can't see that that time is about to be passed in the near future then I'm not too sorry if their browser simply dies.
If they release a kick-ass browser that is stable, supports the necessary standards (again, well enough), then it's a welcome addition.
If however we need to make Pre-NS6 pages, IE pages, and Post-NS6 pages, then I'm afraid that we're flogging a loosing horse.
<flame>For years now, Microsoft has been criticized for releasing software with huge amounts of bugs into the public.
I guess this makes Netscape a Microsoft wannabe </flame>
