TK Kim wrote:
>
> Neither.
> I am kinda sick of Netscape, too. I am probably gonna have to pay for
> saying this, but IE5 is a wholelot better browser.
Everybody is answering, so why not me too. :)
I think you need to define "better". IE is in many ways superior as far
as HTML rendering is concerned (if you exclude betas - Mozilla, Opera -
it has the best CSS implementation to date), has a number of nice user
interface features, but the whole IE+OE tandem sucks royally when it
comes to protocol support. I deal with Internet in a network of about
120 computers (Linux, Novell, AIX, NT on the server-side, Win9*, NT as
clients), and recently I just had to force a switch from IE+OE to a
localized version of NN 4.5 - the intranet page suddenly started to look
ugly, but on the other hand all problems with connecting to it magically
disappeared. Believe me, it does frustrate the admin when OE on a PC
attached to the very same switch as server, on a 100 Mbit LAN, gives you
"Connection timed out" errors 75% of the time while connecting to an
IMAP mailbox. And it's not fun when you have to torture your intranet
code and invent ways of forcing IE to behave itself with respect to MIME
types and file extensions.
I've been using Netscape since the 0.8 beta, when it was still called
"Netscape Mosaic". I watched as Andreessen and his boys wasted the
chance to produce a standards-compliant, enabling technology in their
chase for corporate money - somehow <BLINK> was ever more important than
SGML compliancy, <LAYER> won the fight with CSS, and online docs soon
turned into marketing hype (TABLE bugs were suddenly "the original TABLE
design features"). I chuckled in my fist when Netscape turned open
source overnight - of course it was a sign of their continuing
dedication to the idea of free software, never a desperate shot at
regaining ground in an already lost war - and I still curse when my
Linux 128bit 4.73 crashes a dozen times a day. In a lot of ways they
lost the war at their own request, e.g. by not caring enough about the
developers, and even after the defeat it took them some time to realize
what's the right thing to do - now it seems that with Mozilla Netscape
has again the chance to be what it should be from the beginning. But
nonetheless, Netscape still, by and large, gives me the _reliable_
solution where IE prettiness only serves to hide the problems under the
hood.
Try latest release of Mozilla, or some of the stable nightly builds. The
browser is slowly getting there, already almost fully usable, it renders
HTMLlike no other, and it gives you a whole development platform for
your intranet. What you're saying about IE may still be true (in some
areas) for a year or a half, but IMVHO the future will definitely belong
to Mozilla.
--
Grzegorz Staniak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
