Carlfish wrote:
> The simple fact is the Win32 platform is lost. Netscape lost to
> Internet Explorer back when Netscape was still producing a superior
> browser, because Microsoft owned the desktop, and had the resources to
> under-sell and out-market Netscape.
I disagree with this. IE is not an immobile object. Microsoft disagrees with you
as well, hence their using WinXP as leverage to keep AOL using IE, pushing .Net
for IE only, and pushing WinCE for mobile devices with IE, as opposed to waiting
for Palm (the juggernaut of handhelds) to create an OS with a port of Mozilla
(or Mozilla technologies).
> To get any market share back from IE on Win32 you would have to come up
> with a _vastly_ superior product, you would have to market it
> aggressively, and you would have to not charge any money for it. There's
> no incentive for anyone to do that,
AOL wants to wrest control of the desktop away from Microsoft more than Al Gore
wants to horse whip GW Bush.
> I prefer Mozilla, but when I'm running Windows, I often find myself using
> IE by default just because the way it's tied in to the OS makes it more
> convenient when I just want to type in a URL and go somewhere.
To improve performance, I've managed to untie IE from the OS except for
shdocvw.dll (I like the "web view" in Explorer), making IE no more useful than
NS4.77 or Mozilla. Currently, Mozilla is only a second slower to launch than IE.
--
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web [ http://burntelectrons.com ] [ Updated April 29, 2001 ]
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