Netscape's dead. No one cares.

[MoFunk]

Long live Mozilla. I am not an IE fan! But I am made to use it at work. Ack!

 

[mithrandir2001]

<< Netscape is the biggest pain in the a$$ when designing. It's overly strict and uselessly repressive of certian code which is really helpful with IE. >>


I agree. It should at least tell you what's wrong. You miss one lousy </tr> tag and it doesn't render the table at all. It should "assume" like IE does or at least render up to the point where the "error" is, not simply ignore the whole friggin thing.

 

[KiddyKong]

All the high schools + teachers still seem to use Netscape...i don't get it.

 

[mithrandir2001]

<< just know that from this developer, i have very little respect for the W3C standards or the organization itself. >>


I'm not alone.

I think it's important that XML is very strict about syntax and form; its potential use includes being a wrapper for critical data, for instance. However, HTML is just a down-and-dirty, slap-together markup language for displaying text and graphics. HTML sucks - I really don't like the syntax and it has horrible placement abilities - but we still have to use it. Fortunately, browsers like IE make it easy to get around the wasting-your-time W3C standards.

I suppose it sounds horrible to be "anti-standard", but W3C should have produced something that is kinder to commercial interests, instead of being overly academic, slashdot-reading, linux-using, geeky elitists ...after all, the WWW is now more of a commercial tool than an academic/government one. I feel like I spend so much time making webpages look "pretty" and trying to work around the limitations of the HTML 4.0 spec by leveraging browser-specific functions. Academic and government sites are generally simple: they just convey information dryly. That's not true with commercial sites. We need something that allows you to place objects on a webpage easily and intuitively, not this table in a table in a table in a table recursive quagmire.

 

[wyvrn]

<< I feel that Microsoft is innocent in this regard. It is totally their choice whether or not to bundle their web browser with their operating system. It is also entirely their choice whether or not to allow OEMs to bundle Netscape with their operating system.

If someone does not like Microsoft's practices, no one is forcing them to use it. They are a company, and they have the right to do whatever they want to their operating system. They don't owe anyone anything. Everyone has the choice to use their products or not to use them.

As tcsenter mentioned in his excellent post, "Every industry does it, its called "improving the product" by "adding features or function". What's next, Microsoft being accused of "bundling" system utilities (defrag or backup) with its OS, hurting third-party utility makers like Symantec (Norton Utilities) or Veritas?" >>


Bingo!



<< But it's illegal. MS has monopoly on the OS-market. OEM's depend on their Windows-licenses. If MS blackmails OEM's with that ("If you ship Netscape, we will double your license-cost"), it means that they are abusing that monopoly to kill competition, and it's illegal. And you could ask what right MS has to tell OEM's what they can and can't ship with THEIR computers? >>



They have a monopoly because IE is a better product. Just because they choose to include their own web browser with their own OS is not inherently illegal. If they used strongarm tactics with OEM's to not include a different browser software, then yes that is illegal. (Which I think was proven true in court).




<< I stopped using Netscape after IE 4 because IE had a cleaner interface and rendered pages faster. And no, I don't beleive that bundling IE caused Netscape to die.

MS Bundles MSN Messanger with Windows, but I don't use it. I use AIM. I just dislike the MSN Messanger interface. >>



Another very good point. Look, users will load what they want on their computers. AIM is the most popular despite MSN being "bundled". MS does not prevent you from loading AIM onto your computer any more than they prevent you loading Netscape, Opera, or Mozilla. The simple act of them including their browser with Windows is not illegal, unless they prevent OEM or users from installing a competing product. Only then would they be using their "monopoly" power illegally. AOL isn't going to get anywhere with this lawsuit against MS unless it can PROVE that MS strong-armed the OEM's.

 

[Noriaki]

*ahem*

Nutscrape's Dead!
And no one cares!
If there is a hell,
I'll see you there!



I haven't actually tried nutscrape aggrivator 6. But all the 4.x versions blew for Windows, and I had to suffer through using nutscrape on Solaris 6 under CDE and that made the internet nearly unusable Nutscrape was so bad.
I would WTS into a Dual PentiumPro 200 machine and run Internet Explorer 4 or 5 through WTS rather than run Nutscrape Aggrivator at work...



Nutscrape used to be great back in the days when my 486dx2/66 with a 14.4 was awesome and I surfed the net in Win 3.11 with Netscape 1.x and 2.x The new nutscrapes just plain suck.

 

[Nemesis77]

<< "Stop being so damned GOOD, I can't compete with it. If you won't voluntarily stop being so damned good, I'll have the government make you stop." lmao! >>



OK, for one last time: IE did not beat NS because it's better. It beat NS because it was preloaded by default on 90% of world computers. It won because NS couldn't distribute it's products properly. NS was the dominant browser before, but that dominance means very little when your competitor can force-feed it's application to consumers and shut you out from the distribution-channel.

Example: AMD Athlon has for a long time now outperformed Pentium. And Athlon costs significantly less. Yet AMD's market-share has not risen by 50 percentage-points. IE's did. There's no way IE's market-share could rise so fast, if it wasn't because of MS's illegal tactics.

MS id doing that again with MSN. MSN is the default start-page on IE. If you mistype your web-add, it takes you to MSN's search-page. And didn't MS just announce that MSN search-engine was used more than Google. Guess why? Not because it's better, but because MS force-feeds it alongside IE.

 

[TrueBlueLS]

So many things just seem to go together with IE. I used to use Netscape in like the v4.5 and v4.6, but then I just suddenly switched to IE.

 

[sandorski]

Netscape isn't dead, I any many others are still using it. Since it seems apparent that MS is indeed guilty of uncompetitive charges, I hope Netscape gets every cent owed to it.