Barry Fitzgerald wrote:

Heh.

The article has the following quote:

"On other platforms, such as Linux, Unix and the Mac, Explorer is less of a threat."

Uhh... yeah, you could say that it's less of a threat on GNU/Linux and Unix... non-existance will do that.

Ummm, perhaps people have a short attention span, but IE used to exist for Solaris and HP-UX at one time. (It was in the 4.x version) But I doubt it has been maintained since. (Heck, I even have a Unix binary of the then NetShow player, which has later mutated into Windows Media Player the hog, replacing the small and dull video player from win95 days... i plays older .asf streams/files all right.)


And yes, from the article it really looks to me that HP was talking about the long-discontinued 4.x (pre-Mozilla) version of Netscape, which used to be available for many platforms and has seen steady use even after 6.x came out, because

1) it was a lot smaller and faster esp in the beginning (remember, at the time Mozilla leaked memory like a sieve, and was so slow that you easily could go for a coffee break, this is what allowed eg Opera to jump into the fray and strike it big)
2) it had an integrated Java Virtual Machine (albeit a fairly antiquated one) which helped platforms where a plugin was not available
3) it had the familiar look-and-feel whereas the new Mozilla look really took some adjustment
4) it was included on just about any installation CD etc just like older version of Acrobat Reader were, to access HTML docs.


And yes, *that* browser is full of bugs by now... even though for a while, Netscape/AOL used to put out minor bugfix releases in silence, exactly because they knew it was used by many...

Regards,
Sz.

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