[H-CHAT] Re: [H-GEN] Stalling Netscape

[Raymond Smith]

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On Tue, 17 Apr 2001, Rob Kearey wrote:
> No, their logic is woolly and half-baked. If you think you're making an
> OS choice based on "Does it work like IE5", then you're mistaken -
> you're making a choice of browser alone, and have no business dealing
> with this sort of thing.

True, but don't forget that applications sell operating systems. If your
company decides that it absolutely must have Advanced e-Business XML/EDI
EAI server 2.1 and it only runs under RayOS then it is likely that RayOS
will be adopted.

> > FLAME BAIT for sure I know, but I have been using Netscape on Linux
> > almost exclusively as my internet machine for about 5 years now and
> > Netscape seems to be going backwards not forwards, Opera and Konqueror
> > are not yet great, Galleon is in the formative stages and about 10 other
> > browsers (including a couple that did look promising but disappeared off
> > the face of the earth) have not proved to be durable.
>
> Flame bait indeed. Konqueror works fine. Opera works fine. Mozilla works
> fine.

It has been my experience that all browsers suck. And it isn't really much
of a surprise all things being considered; the number of crap websites is
without measure. I can't speak for Konq or Moz but I know that while Opera
does a great job of vanilla HTML it does not provide decent SSL or
Java/JavaScript support. This makes it useless for 'e-commerce' sites that
require SSL, and typically require Java and/or Javascript.

> What you're *really* whinging about, Frank, is that non-IE browsers
> don't do the whole proprietry IE Scripting/ActiveX/plugin thing. Well,
> dur. And what do you think can be done about that?

This is a big problem. But it does not take away from the problems free
browsers have with the de facto Java, JavaScript, and SSL standards.

Also, do not be too quick to bag IE. It was the first browser to correctly
support out-of-the-box XML and XSLT. It also has done a superior job of
correctly following W3C standards compared to other browsers, with the
exception of Opera.

Cheers,

Raymond

(Who is surprised to see himself on the same side of the conversation as
Frank. Maybe it is jet-lag.)


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