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

Benjamin Robert Carlyle benc at foxboro.com.au
Wed Apr 18 03:50:00 EDT 2001


[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and  ]
[ Unix-related topics.  Please observe the list's charter.           ]
[ Worthwhile understanding: http://www.humbug.org.au/netiquette.html ]

Sarah Hollings wrote:
> 
> [ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and  ]
> [ Unix-related topics.  Please observe the list's charter.           ]
> [ Worthwhile understanding: http://www.humbug.org.au/netiquette.html ]
> 
> My bank, Suncorp, recently replied to my whinge about apparent errors on
> their new Internet banking site with "Unix is not supported, we support
> only >= MSIE5".
> 
> Their old internet banking site worked just fine under Netscape, Mozi
> struggled with it, but at least I could check my balance.
> 
> Now it relies on some javascript menus which no browser currently built
> for *nix seem to be able to render.

Despite their claims to the contrary, most sites will still
work with the various Netscapes under unices.  I continue to
access the suncorp site, and even Telstra with my current
version 4.76 under Debian Linux.  Javascript has to be turned
on, but that's no great security risk.  I've even left java on
for this installation and had relatively (it's netscape after
all...) few crashes.

This, I would say, is the single biggest selling point of
Netscape on non-Microsoft platforms:  Netscape is used
extensively on Microsoft platforms.  Web site developers and
maintainers work with Netscape in mind, thereby creating
cruddy defacto standards that would otherwise be soely
Microsoft cruddy defacto standards.  The continued existance
of Netscape across all of it's supported platforms continues
to be the last fallback position when we really want to deal
with people and sites that are not friendly to our respective
causes.  Unless other browser choices hit the mainstream (in
particular, windows platforms and mainstream windows users)
netscape is likely to maintain it's position as the cushion
between ourselves and a hard place, not because it's good but
because it's there.


Benjamin.

--
* This is list (humbug) general handled by majordomo at lists.humbug.org.au .
* Postings to this list are only accepted from subscribed addresses of
* lists 'general' or 'general-post'.



More information about the General mailing list