Dear Daniel and friends: This letter was occasioned by the problem of configuring Java for Mozilla .8, which has just been released. Where in the world is the Mozilla configuration section? More to the point, I can't help but wonder why Mozilla can't install a java plug-in correctly, when it is done in STRICT CONFORMITY with its own instructions. You go to a bona fide Java applet, you are instructed to download the java plug-in, you do it, you see it download and install right before your eyes into the mozilla directory. The install ends by telling you that your installation of Java 2 was a success and you are told to close down Mozilla .8 and then reopoen it to the same applet, whereupon it should work splendidly. Instead, it repeats its instructions ad nauseam in an endless loop of frustration. Same for Netscape 6.01, which I downloaded a few days ago amd which is based on Mozilla .7. And, to crown it all, the particular applet in question was positioned wrongly, to the left of the page instead of the center, where it is shown properly by Netscape 4.75, Konqueror, Opera, Netscape 4.76 in Windows and IE5.5. See for yourself: http://www.rollins.edu/Foreign_Lang/Russian/frame2.html Try it in Netscape 4.76 and then in Mozilla .8/Netscape 6.01. Konqueror shows the applet centered but its Java is dead. How can you expect Mozilla/Netscape to conquer the world with this kind of, shall I say, bungling? Let's hope this problem is resolved by the time Mozilla 1.0 is released. As for Netscape 6.01, it puts so many obstacles before the ordinary user whom it, after all, is courting, that, in my opinion, it is shooting itself in the foot, shoulder and head. It does its damnest apparently -- no doubt America Online is to blame -- to force you to accept options you may not want. I have tried Netscape 6.01 on both Windows 98 SE and on Linux, and it's an endless uphill battle. This is surely no way to beat Microsoft. The last straw for me was the final stage where you are asked for your email during the profile section of the configuration. You are NOT allowed to choose your own email address, the one you already have (and that hundreds of millions of users already have). No, you are given the choice only of creating your user name, but the domain must be "netsape.com". Bull! Whom are they kidding? This is coercion pure and simple, and it really outraged me, all the more so when I tried to use Netscape 6.01's mail and found it very difficult to access my [EMAIL PROTECTED] mail. I had to fight tooth and nail against Netscape, and, guess what, I failed. And, then, when I finally figured out how to get my mail from my own server using Netscape 6.01, I found that the Mozilla/Netscape mail client (even after configuring my true type fonts -- I have a dual-boot Win98 SE and LM72) is a terrible disappointment, aesthetically speaking. And this by no means the only disappointment. Fortunately, the true type fonts that you install in LM72 DrakFont are a true miracle, but, then, only for those who have dual-boot. I'll withhold judgment as a user and hope for the best when Mozilla 1.0 comes out. I also hope that those companies that will be branding Mozilla, such as NeoPlanet and no doubt many others that will follow in its wake, will take Mozilla's functional stability and reliablity and structural integrity and completely redesign it from an aesthetic point of view, which, in my opinion, it is sorely lacking. No man has ever fallen in love with a woman (or a car) that has fabulous plumbing but is unattractive, plain or downright ugly in that elusive of all departments called inter-"face." Ask the pursuers of Helen of Troy. By comparison, I took a look at the new Opera 5.0 beta 6 for Linux. It's just a beta, but what a beta! Sweeps you off your feet. I am dying to see the final version. And it's got everything: Java, Security, email, news, the latest technologies and standards, strict conformity to W3C protocols etc. etc. So, why did a couple of geeks from Norway (same for the developers of Konqueror) succeed in producing such a beautifully designed and elegant and flexible and attractive and user-friendly browser when hundreds if not thousands of Mozilla/Netscape developers have not quite measured up to the aesthetic challenge? I cannot judge what's under the hood, but I have no choice but judge what's above the hood, what moves or fails to move my sense, my feelings. Perhaps that's just the point: is it possible that creativity by committee is an oxymoron, a delusion, with too many cooks spoiling the broth? With no central, guiding vision? I am very pleased that Mozilla is nearing completion because I think that a fierce competition will ensue between many companies to take the open-sourece, free Mozilla 1.0 foundation and transform it into a browser that we can not only live with but come to love, like a beautiful painting, a browser the user will WANT to use just for the sheer beauty of it, because he is in love not only with the character and integrity of the program but with its enduringly beautiful face. As an example, I have long used IglooFTP-PRO (there are, of course, many other gorgeous open source programs, like The Gimp, etc.) to download files. When I first saw IglooFTP, I was swept away by its sheer beauty. I knew it to be a first-rate program due to its being recommend to me by one of our gurus. But it was the beauty that won the day. Many a time, I've found myself looking for an excuse to download a program just for the sheer joy of using IglooFTP. Even my wife, who knows and cares nothing for such things, could not help but admire Igloo and other such programs, e.g. KDE, our default desktop. I am sure many of you have had similar experiences with other open source programs (and commercial ones as well). This is not just about dumbing Linux down to the masses: it is about the beauty of an artifact. And everything, including software, has a potential for beauty, an aesthetic dimension that ought not to be denied. Matter without form is as useless to us human beings as form without matter. KDE and Gnome know this all too well, and millions of ordinary Linux users who care about beauty applaud them for this. All power to them. Our own distro, LM72 has gone out of its way to make Linux beautiful AND functional and user-friendly. And with each new version they have been increasingly more successful. A final note on Linux and beauty: VA Linux paid close to $5 million dollars, if I recall, some years ago, to buy the www.linux.com domain name. They have done a great job of informing the Linux community, of serving as a Linux portal. But has anyone noticed how DULL their web site is? How plain the colors, how ordinary and unimaginative and lifeless the web design. What a disappointment! And they paid $5 million for that! By comparison, Slashdot is a joy to look at, even though its content is barely comprehensible to me. I recall with horror my first few days with Red Hat 5.2. It wasn't just the difficulties. I was very fortunate to have the extraoridnary help of so many generous people on that great list. And then once again on Mandrake, to which I switched beginning with LM 6.1 and onto to 6.2, 7.0 and 7.1 and now 7.2 and soon 8.0. What I am talking about are the horrendous fonts in Netscape. I had to use a magnifying glass the first few days to read the text. Obviously, this is no way to fight Microsoft, who, for all their faults, misdemeanors and felonies, know how LOW ordinary computer users' threshold for pain is: very, very low, indeed. And with IE 5.5 installed on their OEMs, there is only one strategy, as I see it, that will overcome the wide gap between IE and Netscape (especially in Linux) to make Netscape a credible browser again and to attract Windows users to Linux: namely, for Netscape to make its installation absolutely flawless and easy as pie, to give its users MAXIMUM freedom in configuring its browser. Nobody is fooled when, in trying to reduce and configure away those ugly, huge toolbar icons in Mozilla/Netscape, you find out that the only way you can do that is to remove the toolbar altogether. Everywhere you turn, Mozilla/Netscape tries to find ways to trap you in their default settings. No one is fooled. You quickly know you are being driven into a snare and you find yourself hollering: "a plague on both your houses" (on both America Online and Microsoft). Perhaps I am wrong, but it is good, at last, to have such a wide selection of Linux browsers to choose from: soon Eazel's Nautilus will join the fray. It, too, I understand, like Konqueror, is a File Manager cum Browser. All power to it. I'll wait and let the dust settle over the next few months and then select for my personal use the browser that shows the fullest respect for the dignity, freedom and self-respect of its users instead of looking for ways to make unwilling captives of them. And if that leads me to Opera or some other commercial browser for Linux, so be it. Right now, as far I am concerned, Mozilla/Netscape has yet to prove that it truly cares about its users. Yours, Benjamin For the record and on personal sidenote, I would like to point out that I had some influence on the resolution of two critical decisions during the formative stages of Mozilla: The first involved finding a suitable, professional Cyrillic font for Mozilla. As a Russian translator, I had no trouble recognizing that the Cyrllic font originally chosen for Mozilla (i.e. Netscape 6) would be nothing less than catastrophic. You would think it would be an easy matter solving this "minor" problem. No way. I had to fight for months to finally convince Mozilla that they needed to replace the piece of crap they were dishing out with a professional Cyrillic font worthy of Mozilla/Netscape and their Cyrillic users. The second concerned the infamous AUTOMATIC sorting of Netscape/Mozilla bookmarks by Name. The latter especially generated an enormous amount of unnecessary controversy, with many Mozilla developers' pride apparently on the line: The whole thing was nothing but a bug that for years, in spite of endless urging on my part and the part of many others, had never been fixed in the Netscape 4.x series (automatic sorting by name worked flawlessley in Netscape 1.x, Netscape 2.x and Netscape 3.x but failed, due to a bug, in the Netscape 4.x series). Eventually, Netscape had the gall to regard this idiotic bug as some kind of feature (look up "automatic sorting of bookmarks" on Netscape's support page). I am thankful to those at Mozilla who finally saw the light and corrected this in anticipation of Netscape6. Otherwise, Netscape 6's great bookmarks feature would have been rendered utterly useless from the start. The point in all of this is that these battles with bureaucracy (the latter one lasting four years, on and off, beginning with my first messages to the Netscape 4.0 engineers) totally frustrated and baffled and unnerved me. Why aren't they listening to common sense, I asked. It's just a stupid bug. This was as good an illustration as ever, as far as i was concerned, of how difficult it is to create anything by committe that has a singular, original, dynamic vision and and an "interface" to match. OK, I have said enough. I really hope Mozilla and Netscape and Opera and Konqueror and Nautilus take the world by storm. No one knows who will eventually be on top. Microsoft clearly understood the aesthetic challenge when it poured millions of dollars and thousands of manhours into the development of IE. Yes, as GM found out in th 1920's and as television found out in the 60's and as KDE and Gnome have recently found out, most of us want reliablity but also a touch of beauty and elegance. If we can't come "to love," however foolishly, these inanimate piles of virtual objects called interfaces (much as you programmers love the code that produces them), then someone has failed, and it is useless to blame the user. In these matters in which our soul is, however trivially, touched, beauty must have its say. Benjamin Registered and paying user Official version of RH 5.2, RH 6.0 LM6.1, LM6.2, LM7.0, LM7.1 and LM7.2 -- Sher's Russian Web http://www.websher.net Benjamin and Anna Sher [EMAIL PROTECTED]
