David Tenser wrote: > > > JTK wrote: > >> David Tenser wrote: >> >>> Even simple crappy Wordpad has this functionality (at least moving >>> toolbars), >> >> >> Simple, crappy Wordpad is also able to edit plain text relatively >> easily, unlike Mozilla's "composer". Do you know that until about a >> month ago, Mozilla's email/news editor didn't even have a *context >> menu*?! I shittest thou not. > > > Since I'm the author of a text editor myself (www.texturizer.net) I'm > actually glad that Mozilla does this poorly :) > >>> With an open source project involving hundreds of developers over a >>> several-year time span, you would expect a very customizable program >>> with lots of design/appearance preferences, but Mozilla is in fact >>> very hard to customize... Ok, you can change skin, but that's about it. >> >> >> Expect this reply to that from the AOL staff and the Mozillapologists: >> >> "Oh no, Mozilla is extremely customizable, and it's easy! Just write >> a few hundred lines of Javascript...." > > > Exactly my point. You can customize Mozilla to be a totally different > browser if you really want and have the time. On the other hand, you > could also make your own web browser from scratch if you had the time > and knowledge, so that doesn't help the average user. It seems for me > that Mozilla doesn't aim for the big market. It aims for developers. > What is that, 5% of the market? Maybe 10?
For what it is worth, I am an average user and with the help of the Netscape newsgroup I find that 6.2.1 meets most of my needs. I find that the posts to the newsgroups that complain the most are from people who are much more in the mold of developers. I think most of the average users are quietly using Netscape as the latest incarnation of "The Silent Majority" > >> I'm not sure how the rest of it goes, since my eyes glaze over at that >> point and I go use something else that has a checkbox to do the exact >> same thing ten times better. > > > And ten times faster. > >> Any color as long as it's black. BUT YOU CAN USE ALL KINDS OF >> DIFFERENT SKINS! >> >> Oh, well, not really, something like a grand total of SIX at last >> count, if you search really hard and don't mind a lot of stuff not >> working. But that XUL was sure worth it! Pfhht. One quick question . . . how does having a skin make your life easier or more productive?> > > Yeah, I was amazed by the fact that Mozilla have been around for several > (?) years, and there's only like five skins available. And as you point > out, few are viable alternatives to the tvo main skins. Who cares? And why do they care? > >> In fact, the only things that can be said about Mozilla's goals are this: >> >> 1. "Cross-platform", which translates into "If we need to make it ten >> times worse on Windows (99%+ of the target users) so that it will run >> on some oddball OS that nobody ever heard of (BeOS, 0.0000001% of >> target users), we'll do it". > > > This is true. It's a huge tradeoff. On the other hand, this is probably > the most important aspect of Mozilla. Netscape lost the browser war on > the Windows platform, and the aim is probably to be the #1 browser on > all other platforms instead. For an *average* linux/unix/bsd user (i.e. > a highly experienced programmer!) the UI of Mozilla is like a dream. > They're used to console based configuring, java scripting and so on. An > average windows user (and even the experienced ones) are used to a much > more visual experience. Mozilla simply doesn't deliver what Windows > users expect of it. Please explain yourself. I am a Windows user and I am getting what I expect, most of the time. > >> 2. "Standards-compliant", which translates, "Standards-compliant web >> browser, when it's convenient for AOL". > > > I'm not sure how much involved AOL are in the Mozilla project itself. > I'm probably wrong there, however, since Netscape is owned by AOL and > many programmers of Mozilla are in fact Netscape developers. > > Anyway, I can't complain much about standard-compliance with Mozilla, > aside from trivial issues such as favicon.ico. But Mozilla is going > nowhere on the Windows platform as long as they don't also focus on the > UI and associated functionality. The average Windows user does not care > if the Gecko engine renders the page with higher precision and (maybe) > speed compared to IE. Why don't they? If they don't what do they care about? > >>> because the only thing they seem to be doing is ignoring suggestions >>> like this one, and fixing trillions of bugs. >> >> >> Well, and adding more bugs, according to the stratospheric bug count >> numbers in bugzilla. > > > I was in fact going to say that too, but I stopped myself because in the > end I didn't want to upset dedicated Mozilla lovers :) You are > absolutely right. There are so many bugs, and many of them have been > there for far too long. I have actually reported one bug myself > (124703), and only one day after that, over 50 more bugs was reported. > One week later, my bug is still unconfirmed... > >>> Is it someone in this newsgroup that agrees with me, or am I just >>> being very negative at the moment? >> >> >> You are 100% dead-on brother. > > > I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one. I hope that someone highly > involved in the Mozilla project gets to read this too, although I doubt > it will make a difference. Thanks for your thoughts JTK. > >>> I was editing my homepage the other day and I followed the book in >>> CSS formatting, and it actually worked without a problem in Mozilla, >>> but IE6 couldn't display it properly! :) On that point, Mozilla is >>> superior, and something tells me that this (Gecko) is their main >>> focus. Not the UI. >> >> >> I think you're missing a key piece of the puzzle in your understanding >> of the Tacoma Narrows Browser Project here: The UI is written in >> something called "XUL". Basically Mozilla's UI is a glorified webpage >> *itself*, and is rendered by that same engine. Slowly. Poorly. >> Resulting in the vast majority of the problems people have with Mozilla. > > > Yes, I realize that what I just wrote sounded strange, since the UI _is_ > the Gecko engine, as you so cleverly pointed out. This is why Mozilla is > so slow! Ok, the page may be rendered faster according to some advanced > benchmarking tests, but the average user (I keep getting back to that > user!) won't even notice it. She will only notice that the program loads > slowly and is slow overall. Your loading comment may be right, but compared to the loading of Windows NT its licketty split, so I guess everything is relative. As an end-user of both IE and 6.2.1 I find them to be of comparable speed. Can you give me some URLs that show the speed differential that you refer to. > > A 100% portable application simply can't be fast. At least not > applications in this size. It's either speed (OS optimizations) or > portability. > >>> I can just imagine the Gecko engine inside a Microsoft designed UI. >> >> >> You don't have to imagine, it's called "K-Meleon". It proves that >> Mozilla's "XUL" notion is completely out-of-whack. > > > Wow! K-Meleon, is it any good? > > / David >
