> From: Ramon Gandia [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Benjamin Sher wrote:
> > still needs a lot of work. I am, of course, disappointed to
> know that
> > Mozilla 13 is not yet ready for prime time, but truth, in
> the long run,
> > never hurt anybody. Let's hope the Mozilla folks continue to improve
> > their new Communicator.
>
> That is the whole problem, Ben. Communicator was never a good
> product, for either Windows or Linux. The code on Communicator
> has been in the 13MB to 20 MB depending on version.
The last version of Netscape I used at any length was NS3.0. I switch to
Internet Explorer and haven't looked back. Considering how much M$ usually
ignores standards and blazes their own trail, IE4 and IE5 are VERY compliant
and up-to-date with Web Consortium standards.
This became very apparent when I tried to design some web pages. IE would
function according to the spec while Netscape merrily went its own way and
either ignored the tag or, worse, misinterpreted the tag. Netscape 4.x, for
example, is frickin' clueless about cascading style sheets. HELLO??!!! How
many years has CSS been in the spec? 3? 4?
I could go on, but I think I made my point: Whatever M$ faults are, they
have the most compliant browser on the market. Period. I think the web
browser open source community should wake up and smell the coffee. You guys
are NOT outperforming the "evil empire" with regard to browsers. Just a
fact of life.
To be fair, I did try M13 yesterday on my LM6.1 system. The fonts were so
small I couldn't read it, and no matter what options I tried, I couldn't
increase the fonts onscreen. That, along with 10 crashes, both exceptions
and outright fatal errors, tells me that the Mozilla project still seems to
be stumbling along. I blame Netscape and AOL more than the programmers. It
isn't fully open source like Linux so why would the many Linux gurus want to
develop it.
Matt Zaleski
P.S. Contrary to the stance some might think I have, I have no love for
Microsoft and I want Linux and open source to kick their butts. But if
we're not honest about the capabilities on the Open Source side, we're no
better than the PR ("marketing" to those outside the U.S.) machine in
Redmond.
