Hall Stevenson wrote:
>
> When you say 'people' I assume you mean geeks or nerds, right ?? They're
> the only ones who care about being compliant with standards. Ask your
> co-workers if they know what W3C standards or if they care what they
> are. They want a browser that *works*. They won't accept a browser
> that's slower than the one they're currently using. They won't accept
> one that doesn't work with their online banking when the 'other' browser
> does.
>
You argument is faulty in several ways. You fail to contemplate history
and very possible scenarios for the future based on history. Haved you
heard of paradigms shifts. There are plenty of those shifts in the
technology field alone. When Wordstar was the prevalent wordprocessor it
was considered super fast, eficient, a typist dream (I loved the dot
commands), then one day as a shift to DOS was happening they failed to
recognize that a new standard was developing (based on DOS and not on
CP/M). WordPerfect came into the picture. WordPerfect was slower and
harder to used by touch typists (Function keys were "too far" from the
QUERTY keyboard as opposed to Wordstar dot commands) But people who
moved to the new standard (DOS) started using WP more and more. By the
time WordStar introduced their WS for DOS, WP had grabbed the mindshare
of people. Something very similar happened to WorPerfect vs Winword when
Win3.0 was introduced. Anyone remember how awful was WP5.1 for Windows.
Every 2 years or so game console manufacturers go through the same
thing. Atari replaced by Nintendo which in turn was replaced by Sega
replaced by Nintendo again, and replaced by Sony and replaced by <add a
new name here>. Why people shift from one to the other even when the
number of games for the new consoles is sometimes very limited? Because
the one that replaces the other adds features not avalable in the one
they replace and because they also introduce with the console one or
two "cool games" not available from the other.
Mozilla/Netscape have a chance of a come back. Their standard compliance
is unmatched and MS reluctance (foot dragging) could open an
opportunity. If some cool sites that incorporate the latest in CSS and
other standards become popular people WILL look at IE alternatives.
Mozilla might need a "killer" website the same way that some hardware
manufactures need killer applications to get their product going. What
about a Webbased game or something like that? If AOL switches to gecko
and drops IE then all those banks and sites that do not support
Mozilla/Netscape6.x will be forced to do so. They won't be able to
ignore 30+ million subscribers. More people buy through AOL (ecommerce)
and access the web than through any other ISP in the world. AOL website
is among the most popular or sometimes the most popular in the web. If
AOL design their site to take advantage of gecko's abilities popel will
consider switching too.
The browser speed is becoming a non issue since it's becoming faster and
more stable with every milestone and the computers people/business buy
are becoming faster and faster and with more memory. The average entry
level new PC now has and 800MHz processor and 128 megs of RAM. By the
end of the year the entry level PC will be faster than 1GHz and memory
in the range of 128-256mb. Mozilla runs faster than IE on Win2000. Since
XP is strongly based on W2000 I wouldn't be surprised if Mozilla were
faster in this new environment too.
In the technology field, whoever drag their feet always persish or get
replaced.
