OK, and I'm really not trying to stir up trouble...
I use Netscape for sole reason that it's not MS/IE. Call me paranoid but I've been
in this field a long time to know that once MS has established a "solid base"
(recently declared a monopoly) it will use that to competitive advantage. Now that
means to me that once MS has captured the browser market it will change key elements
to break servers (pages) that they don't like and give their own engine an
advantage. This is precisely what they did on the desktop and now they control that
API (no, I'm not a programmer so this is a philosophical discussion, not a technical
one.)
Now, it's been stated that MS/IE is "far more standards compliant than any version
of Netscape". That is not at all inconsistent with them wanting to take over the
web. First you play nice until everyone on board, then you change the rules to
benefit yourself. It does raise the question if controlling the browser market can
indeed influence or control the server market. Based on Windows/3.X/95/98 being
used to drive NT I'd say the answer is yes. Does it hold true for the browser
market as well or will the "open" HTML standards preclude this? The Windows API's,
although published, are still privately held. The HTML standards are not privately
held.
I still feel that HTML standards could be manipulated to a companies advantage if
the browser share were large enough ("embrace and extend") but I'd love to hear
others comments on this. Like I said I refuse to run IE and support a monopoly but
I'd love to hear others comments. Also, I know that this crowd, by default uses a
browser other than MS/IE simply because IE won't run on Linux. Nonetheless the
philosophical argument still stands.
Thanks, GGK
Niall Kavanagh wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Apr 2000, Benjamin Scott wrote:
>
> > From what I understand, the Mozilla team discovered a few things when they
> > were building Navigator V5 (yes, five). The first was that the entire current
> > Navigator codebase (which is a direct linear descendant of NCSA Mosaic) was
> > completely unworkable and would have to be scrapped. Hence, this release is
> > Navigator V6. The second was that, frankly, the Netscape DOM was a
> > non-standard mess, and implementing it all over again would (1) be a waste of
> > time and (2) actually be counter-productive, because it is totally
> > non-standard.
> >
>
> And I think they absolutely did the right thing by re-writing and
> implementing standards. However, if a company puts out products that cause
> a certain infrastructure to be formed they have a responsibility to
> support that infrastructure.
>
> > <RANT LEVEL=MILD>
> >
> > Don't develop for web browsers. Develop for the W3C specifications. If you
> > make the mistake of tying yourself to a specific browser, then you should
> > expect to get bitten when things change. Microsoft has taught us this lesson
> > again and again: When you lock yourself into a proprietary solution, you will
> > be forced to start over repeatedly.
> >
> > I have no sympathy for people who follow proprietary "standards" and then
> > complain when they turn out to be proprietary.
> >
> > </RANT>
> >
>
> <rant type="response" class="honestly agreeing with reservations">
> Until very recently NO browser has supported all the W3C standards. The
> reality of the situation is that there is a lot of code out there that
> will simply stop working once Netscape 6 hits the fan. Pedantic adherance
> to standards is not the norm on the web, and that's a sad fact of life.
>
> Creating HTML pages that adhere to the standards has never been a problem;
> creating web application that make full use of feature sets has.
> Developing said applications means making use of the technologies
> available *now*, whether they are standardized or not.
>
> It's reasonable to expect code re-implementations when you walk the edge.
> I happen to think it's also reasonable to provide backwards-compatibility
> or rudimentry upgrade paths. It doesn't look like Netscape will do this.
> </rant>
>
> On that note, let me mention that IE has been far more standards compliant
> than any version of Netscape until Moz came along. It'll be interesting to
> see what the next generation of IE can do head-to-head with Moz! ;)
>
> --
> Niall Kavanagh, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> News, articles, and resources for web professionals and developers:
> http://www.kst.com
>
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