Peter Fjelsten wrote to feedback:
> I like it! I tried installing NS6 after having run Preview3 but it
> wouldn't run under Win2K SP1. I am an Opera-man but Beonex is much
> better than NS6 - as you write yourself, Beonex is without all the
> AOL-crap that comes with NS.
Note: Beonex has no such "crap" for ideological reasons, not in order to
save you from advertizing.
Advertizing brings a lot of money, and Netscape pays many Mozilla
contributors from it. Beonex does not go this route, because that shifts
*interests*: The real customers of "Adware"-vendors are advertizers, and
advertizing on the internet usually works with a lot of privacy
intrusions*. Those in turn often require reduced security, e.g. JS in
Mailnews default on. "User agents" are not really *user*-agents anymore,
but work for the interest of and with the sites, while they should
really see the site as opposite party (like in a contract).
*Add the following together: Registration, startpage, cookies (for
autologin), cookies on ads (for cross-site tracking), many partner
sites, and you have a tracking mechanism some government agencies would
dream of.
One of my goals with Beonex is to get that "price" users pay for free
services and products into people's minds.
(BTW: I don't know about MSIE and privacy, but MSIE is not good in
security either.)
But: Beonex does cost us money. We work on it, and we need to live. The
servers cost money (traffic!). Every user that switches from Netscape6
to Beonex Comm. removes advertizing revenue from Netscape, which in turn
also removes a little bit of Netscape's ability to contribute to
Mozilla, which in turn will end up as Beonex, too. So, we have a moral
responsibility to contribute code to Mozilla.
Development costs a lot of money. We need to finance this by direct
sponsoring from you. There are / will be 2 ways: Either you sponsor one
feature directly (i.e. you say "I'll give you x$, if you implement
feature foo"), or you donate money to Beonex in general, which we will
use for code maintainance (bugfixing etc.), paying servers, ....
I will have to figure out a way you can donate smaller values, and I
will post as soon as I have something. I hope for your support.
> Some things are still nicer under Opera: browsing speed, lack of
> sluggishness (it seems as everthing has to be calculated 3 times
> before a dialog box/Prefences is drawn in Beonex: too slow),
This will improve a lot with the next releases.
> and much better control (Preferences).
Oh. I thought, Mozilla has preferences for everything (often without UI,
though). I don't know Opera - what specifically are you missing?
> Regarding the WWW site:
> For a non-geek like me :) (i.e. without much experience in the whole
> GPL, co-development, scene)
OK, the website doesn't seem to be very popular.
I do know that the cross-linking needs a lot of improvement. Maybe, I
should introduce something like Berlin's
<http://www.berlin-consortium.org> "jump"- (formerly "Related"-) bar on
the left? That way, I could e.g. link to the announce mailinglist on the
support pages.
> it is quite hard to find out what/who Beonex actually is.
> What I miss is:
> Why you are doing this? What is the company structure?
These questions surprise me somewhat.
How does <http://www.beonex.com/communicator> not explain, what Beonex
Communciator is? At the end of the page, there is even our business
model mentioned in short.
"Company structure" is explained at the homepage and at "About Legal"
<http://www.beonex.com/about/legal.html>.
Why we are doing this is hidden in a FAQ
<http://www.beonex.com/communicator/doc/faq.html>. I didn't consider the
FAQ polished enough to show it the world. Especially follow the "policy"
links.
> In short, something for the lesser geeks! :)
Yes, do I have a problem with explaining all this for normal users.
Requirements I *know*:
- Short (otherwise, it won't be read)
- Correct
- Stable URLs
- Rational (no excited marketing fluff)
- No direct comparisons with competitors (forbidden here in Germany)
- Understandable for normal users
I have especially a problem with the last 3 together (any 2 of them at
the same time are no problem).
So, if some "normal" users could help me with rewording and maybe
reorganizing the website, that would be appreciated. Suggestions welcome :).
The URL structure (and thus some of the site structure) must remain that
way, because the URLs will still have to work in a few years (assuming
Beonex is still in business then). I don't want to maintain a host of
redirections like Netscape and others do.
Also, we still need to offer enough information for "geeks" (which are
part of our userbase).
> [Reordered:] What are your plans (next releases)?
I don't know either :-(.
- Netscape won't tell me about upcoming 6.0x releases (I am currently
fighting with them), which would be important for Beonex Comm. 0.6.x.
- Mozilla has no plan (i.e. headless) about upcoming Milestones.
- I am even considering to go alone, just grab a good build and release
that, with the risk of unknown bad bugs. Maybe, I use a multi-track
strategy (having several current releases at the same time), but that
has the potential for even more confusion for users.
You see, I have no idea. We'll see. Right now, I still need to recover
from the release of 0.6 and consequences.
> All in all, if I could just get Beonex to work with my bank
> <www.danskenetbank.dk> that is Java based, NS 4.08 is out the window.
> I like it!
Just install PSM (see install page).
> Standards forever!
Riiight. <http://www.beonex.com/about/policy/protocol>
> Keep up the good work.
>
> BTW, the rendering engine in Mozilla is strange: it's as if the page
> is drawn and then fine tuned afterwards. What is happening?
Note sure what you mean. It renders progressively, i.e. renders
something before all required information (e.g. the table structure) is
available (downloaded). This requires re-rendering later.
> BTW2: I had to copy the e-mail link as the mailto: thing does not work
> with EudoraPro5.
Known. External mail ahndlers are not implemented.
(Peter, I think, this is of general interest, so I posted it to the
users mailinglist <http://www.beonex.org/support>, too. Please cc
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> in your replies.)
