Paul Bergsagel wrote:
> My take on this is: most of the people surfing the web who are
> concerned about standard complience have already dumped IE for another
> browser with better standards and know how to find these browsers. The
> average "non techinical geek" cares little about standards when
> choosing a browser, and might even be turned off if this is mentioned.
> This group chooses their browser becuase they find it easier to work
> with bookmarks, they like the toy story theme, ect. More people will
> use the browser because it has the toy story theme than because it has
> W3C standards complience. By the start of the school year, one kid
> will ask his friend, did you see that browser with the toy story
> colourful skin, and by the second week of the start of school hundreds
> of thousands of copies of Netscape 6.1p will have been downloaded.
> This is a good way to get the browser out there. Something standards
> complience could never do (in terms of getting the browser onto the
> computer. Hopefully the parents will see this browser that the kid
> downloaded, like it and begin to use it as well.
>
> Way to go Netscape. Using a theme as bait to get the browser onto the
> computer desktop! Genius!
>
> BTW standards are more important than themes but don't tell the kids
> this.
I couldn't agree with you more. I have been saying that the theme
feature in Mozilla/Netscape could be a big way to attract people to use
the browser.. I noticed that already. I installed the browser in my
computer at work and downloaded the Toy Factory theme. Everyone who
passed by asked me what program i was using. They couldn't believe it
was Netscape 6.1. Two hours later 4 people out of ten in my team had
downloaded and were using it with the Toy Factory. Netscape should
include Toy Factory as part of their standard installation and dumped
the ugly and antiquated Classic theme if for some reason they want to
include just two themes (Modern as default, Toy Factory as alternate)
And to add icing to the cake, CNet put an article where Netscape 6.1 was
as fast or faster than IE5.5 under Win2K. Netscape was slower than IE
under Windows Me but I think it was because they use a slower computer
under that operating system. I wonder how well Netscape runs under
Windows XP. I am sure it will be as fast as under W2K.
http://home.cnet.com/software/0-3227883-8-6804817-4.html?tag=st.sw.3227883-8-6804817-2.txt.3227883-8-6804817-4
Now is the time for AOL to use their marketing and money to get PC OEMs
to include Netscape, or better, to dump IE as their html engine for AOL7
