Posting out of a Linux OS window.

Cool, except for the part where I desperately hate Mozilla.

Y'know, you're the first person I've heard who has soundly panned Mozilla. Anything specific you want to suggest about it?

Y'know, you're the first person I've heard who has soundly panned Mozilla. Anything specific you want to suggest about it?

Echo ... echo ... echo ...

Simply put, Mozilla (which is basically the open-source code for Netscape) isn't css-compliant, doesn't entirely 'work' with half the scripts that I built my page around (like oh... Movable Type quickpost), doesn't display divs correctly, etc.

Let's see if I can sum this up by paraphrasing...

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) (an international think-tank group of programmers, designers and mathematicians headed by the guy who invented the web back in 1990) does an amazing job setting standards for web programming - they not only release actual working code on a regular basis, but also constantly keep busy coming up with the next big thing that will revolutionize the internet all over again (like XTML, which will pretty much completely eliminate the need for HTML in about ten years).

There's only one problem with the W3C, which is the most frustrating thing about them - they have no legal authority. Unlike the FCC, the W3C cannot force Netscape and IE to comply with their standards, only suggest that it's in their best interest to do so. And for years, neither company was willing to listen to them.

Cascading Style Sheets are a perfect example of this. CSS was a new protocol for the web officially released by the W3C in 1996 to finally pacify the growing number of traditional designers who were suddenly being forced to work on corporate sites.

As anyone who's designed a website knows, HTML was never meant to duplicate the look of a paper magazine or brochure - since it was originally designed as a way for professors and scientists to swap research papers, there was originally no need for HTML to do anything but display black text on a gray screen, straight down from the top to the bottom with no margins. The web has since become a plaything for millions of others besides these original scientists, and design needs have become more sophisticated. Traditional designers, used to being able to pick up objects in Quark XPress and plop them down anywhere on the page they need, have used a variety of loopholes and cheats in HTML to achieve their desired look over the years - tables, invisible frames, spacer .gifs, Photoshopped text. It's a backwards-ass way of programming, using these loopholes in the language to achieved desired effects, and it just makes more sense to instead invent a new language that finally gives web designers the same power to manipulate objects as they do in an average page-layout program.

Which is kinda what CSS is like, although it's more of an "add-on" to HTML instead of a replacement.

Version 1 of the CSS protocol was released by the W3C in 1996, and version 2 a couple of years later. It really is a beautiful thing, when examined by itself - using the full power of CSS2, you literally will never have the need again for tables, spacer .gifs, or even certain pieces of text displayed in .jpgs so that you can have full control over their look.

The problem, like I said, is that Netscape and IE both looked at the standards for CSS and said "screw you" to the W3C. Well, they didn't exactly say "screw you," but they said things like, "We like some of these commands you've invented, but not others, so our new browser's only going to support...oh, 50 percent of them." Or, "Hey, if you think this version of CSS is cool, just you wait and see the one we're inventing for our own browser! It's going to have a bunch of proprietary commands that won't work on our competitor's browser. We're going to win the war for sure this time!"

Meaning that no one could really use CSS in the way that it was meant to be applied. Then, a couple of years ago, Microsoft announced that starting with version 5, all versions of IE would be fully compliant with the W3C specifications on CSS, which really turned the tide in the eyes of web designers, because: 1) designers are sick to death of having to program for two different, non-compatible browsers; and 2) designers love CSS. (And why not? You can change details to an entire site with just one line of code change, and you don't actually have to learn anything much more above the HTML that most of us taught ourselves back in the mid-90s.)

The important part, though, is that Netscape did not make the same decision - they are still selectively deciding which specific commands in CSS they are going to support, and are still making plans to include proprietary CSS commands to their browsers that can only be understood by Netscape users.

Given Microsoft's willingness to defer to the W3C and Mozilla/Netscape's refusal, a growing number of designers have said, "Screw this. I'm going to design my site in CSS2 - if Netscape refuses to build a browser that understands it, well that's their fucking problem."

This is a big problem for Mozilla/Netscape, because the only people using Netscape ANYWAY are the ones who realize that it does in fact exist, and go out of their way to download a version for their computers. Given their ongoing refusal to comply to W3C standards, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if the entire company was out of business five or ten years from now.

In a perfect world, Netscape (and again, by extension, Mozilla) would finally decide to comply with the W3C just like Microsoft has, and we'd all live in a happy world where flowers always smell nice and websites look exactly the same no matter what browser you're on.

If'n you don't like Mozilla you could try Opera at http://www.opera.com/download/get.pl?platform=linux&force=6.01

Count me in to the number of web designers who have said, "Screw Netscape."

I'm no big fan of Microsoft, but this is one instance where they simply have a better product. Netscape 4.x is awful beyond words. Netscape 6.x is better, but not good enough.

I haven't looked at Opera for a while. Last time I did, they were worse than Netscape (though Netscape didn't suck as much back then).

But screw it. I'm designing for IE first, Lynx second, and the-hell-with-you-if-you-can't-support-modern-protocols dead last.

Of course, my pages suck, so I don't expect to be turning any major opinions. :P

Mozilla.

I don't like it on BSD, Linux or Win32 because, franky it's a resource hog. I don't have the reasons Doyce does, mine are more nit-picky.

I'm looking at a Darwin/Aqua iMac right now with the latest IE and Mozilla installed, both are Carbon apps (C++).

IE is 20MB
Mozilla is 37.1

IE takes 7 seconds to start and render the first webpage
Mozilla takes 24 seconds

In top
IE 1.9 %CPU
Mozilla 17.8 %CPU

IE 91M VSIZE
Mozilla 142M VSIZE

That all said, I flip between the Cocoa (Objective-C) Chimera 0.3.0 and IE on my PowerBook, OmniWeb (Objective-C) is nice, but I don't like it's GUI.

An Objective-C browser eats up about 1/4th the disk space and memory of the C++ ones on Darwin/Aqua.

On Linux, I use Konqueror.

Personally, I think the best version of Netscape/Mozilla was 4.0.8.

Chimera and Fizzila are the Objective-C ports of the Mozilla browser without the news and mail features.

What really, really annoyed me with Mozilla was what a pain in the ass the Carbon port is to switch email clients. Even if I tell the OS what mail program I want...and everyother frickin' brower works with it...Mozilla doesn't play nice.

In some respects, Mozilla is about as friendly as IE 3.0.

I'm looking at things in Opera (for linux) right now, and I'm liking it a great deal better than I like Mozilla/Netscape/Konqueror.

Lack of scrollbars is pretty wild. The display of the pages... well, it's not exactly what I'm used to, but it's not WRONG, either. All in all, I'm pleased.

Now if I can just get an email program that I like...

Hmmm. Interesting.

Granted that NetScape is now part of the AOL Collective, but it's pretty sad when people are so dead-set *on* (vs *against*) an M$ product.

You'd think M$ would learn ...

Anyway, interesting. Like I said, most of the trade press I'd been reading on Mozilla 1.0 was waxing lyrical about it, so I was surprised to see such a vehement No vote.

Hmmm. Interesting.

Granted that NetScape is now part of the AOL Collective, but it's pretty sad when people are so dead-set *on* (vs *against*) an M$ product.

You'd think M$ would learn ...

Anyway, interesting. Like I said, most of the trade press I'd been reading on Mozilla 1.0 was waxing lyrical about it, so I was surprised to see such a vehement No vote.

Sorry for the echo again. I keep hitting a new Comment from the page while the old one's processing, and I'm never sure if it's actually posted, so I click Post again ...

*sigh*

Netscape is part of the great AOL/TimeWarner/BoyMyStockPriceTanked collective, but Mozilla is not Netscape.

Mozilla is quite possably one of the longest and most bloated Open Source developments this side of Gnome and KDE. With the original development leader, Jamie Z leaving in a post public and angry manner to start a night club, 3 years later it's still not done.

At least Mozilla doesn't take a core dump like KDE/Gnome1-2.0 do on Red Hat.

you guys are beyond geeky!!! I didn't understand a word of your post and you got 13 people to repond to it, with lots more confusing crap. Geeks, all of you!!

you guys are beyond geeky!!! I didn't understand a word of your post and you got 13 people to repond to it, with lots more confusing crap. Geeks, all of you!!

Glad to see I'm not the only one in an echo chamber ...