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Netscape sucks! ...or does it? 2

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petey

petey

Programmer
Mar 25, 2001
383
US
Hi all. In spite of the title, this post isn't a rant against Netscape, but rather an attempt to shed light on the (seemingly) universal feeling among web designers that "Netscape Sucks".

I'll start by saying Netscape 4.x did suck because of non-standard behavior (<layer>, etc) and its shoddy implementation of existing standards.

Netscape 6 sucked for different reasons. We all remember downloading it with high hopes, only to realize it was an unusable mess of bugs.

Everybody now has such a bad taste in their mouth about Netscape that they're happy to forget about it, which is understandable, but also unfortunate. Let me encourage you to give Netscape just *one* more chance. Here's why:
[ul][li]The bad taste in your mouth is based on the past, but some positive things have happened of late that deserve attention. Read on...[/li][li]They've turned a corner and began building to support web standards. Microsoft is lately starting to do this too. This meands no more browser wars; things are actually getting to the point where they work the same as long as you code to web standards.[/li][li]The latest (NS 7.0.2, Mozilla 1.2.1) are nowhere near as buggy as the first Netscape 6 browsers. People can actually use them now, and some have been doing so comforatably for awhile.[/li][li]Their support for correct web standards actually surpasses that of IE. This is my main point for this post. You can test technologies in Netscape/Mozilla today that are not yet (but will soon be) implemented for IE.[/li][/ul]
I'm not a cheerleader for AOLTW, Netscape, or Mozilla, but I am a cheerleader for web standards. Netscape now (ironically) leads the world in that area, although many designers are so fed up with &quot;Netscape&quot; that they don't pay attention or realize it. I just want to spread the word.

Netscape 7:
Mozilla (leaner, meaner, better):

Regards,
Petey
 
I give a star to petey here. Though your first sentence scared me (and your title as well).

The latest versions of Netscape are based off the Gecko rendition engine which is to date the most standard compliant browser out there.

This does mean people have to start writing standard compliant code and the good news is that 90% of things that work in Gecko based browsers works in IE5+.

My recommendations is to download Phoenix ( which is the leanest and meanest of Gecko based browsers and use it as your testing browser.

Write everything to work in Gecko and you can be sure it will most likely work in IE.

Phoenix is my favorite browser by far. Download it and try its tabbed-browsing, unlimited text-sizing (CTRL+mouseScroll very nice after an eye operation), high speed rendering, and works in both Linux and Windows.

I tried tabbed browsing and within five minutes I was hooked!!! Gary Haran
 
I gave up on Netscape after 4. Tried again with 6 and 7. None I liked. I used to prefer Netscape to IE way back (if you can remember ie3). But all the newer versions just seem to be bigger and slower.
Just downloaded the project pheonix one to give it another shot- Early comments is looks promising Infinity exists! - I just haven't worked out a way to get there yet.

| |
 
ne4x4,

My girlfriend and I have a pact. She tries it out for a week and then tells me if she likes it! :) Gary Haran
 
I've always used Netscape and now recently Mozilla, and I've been in charge of writing the website for the company I work for. As I was finding out recently, there's more benefit testing with the two browsers than just for compatibility sake.

For example, if the tables are written correctly, IE & Mozilla will be exact to the very pixel now. However, if there are format problems, like data in a cell extends beyond the defined table boundaries, the browsers handle these cases differently and you'll easily tell if you've got something that's not right.
 
A few new releases of browsers and you will see posts saying

IE 6.0 sucks. IE 6 will become a web developers nightmare in the future. The reasons...

xml opening tag throws it in quirks mode
box model rendering buggy
and many more...

These problems will haunt developers just as NS4 has been for the past few years ranjan
Dreamlettes - A dreamweaver resource
blogMX - DreamweaverMX in black and white and shades of gray
 
Remember... AOL owns Netscape. So they add stuff. Mozilla doesn't have everything and is much faster. iSeriesCodePoet
IBM iSeries (AS/400) Programmer
[pc2]
Want an online bookmarking spot?
 
I agree with codePoet here. Phoenix is actually a leaner version of Mozilla so maybe trying that one out would amount to something even better for you! :) Gary Haran
 
This being a web design forum I didn't want to focus on it from an end user point of view, but rather a which-browser-you-design-for point of view. Thus I didn't mention Phoenix, Camino, and others. Maybe I should have.

In fact I should've probably been more to the point in trying to dispell the notion of &quot;Netscape sucks&quot; by saying that it's not even a matter of which corporation any more so much as which rendering engine. There's Gecko (Netscape, Mozilla, Phoenix), MSHTML (Internet Explorer), Opera's rendering engine, KHTML (Konqueror) and a few others. Except for maybe Opera, these rendering engines are often swapped into different browsers with different names, such as Crazy Browser->MSHTML or Safari->KHTML. These days when you design, think rendering engines.

petey
 
I believe that versions will differ less and less than it used to. Today browsers are really mature and the goal they have to accomplish is getting them to be standard compliant.

The best bet for the future is to always develop using the most standard compliant browser out there (from what I know on a Windows platform that seems to be a Gecko based browser).

Maybe more people should drop inconsistant and non compliant browsers such as NS4 and IE4 for better more compliant ones.

Maybe our job is to make sure more people are aware of the advantages they get from a newer browser and what the community gets from everyone having standard compliant browsers. Gary Haran
 
I also cuss and swear when I have to support Netscape browsers. However I do like Netscape 7.0. It is the only place that has a semblance of a JavaScript debugging environment. It's too bad they have a bad reputation in the eyes of web developers and have very little market. Case of too little too late.

Mickey
 
The problem was, Netscape is based off of Mozilla. Mozilla did a rewrite of all it's code. Netscape at one point was using alpha code. iSeriesCodePoet
IBM iSeries (AS/400) Programmer
[pc2]
Want an online bookmarking spot?
 
I find it interesting that now that Netscape has finally started coming around to supporting standards, people think developer will give up on IE altogether.

The browser war is pretty much over. Thingsare being standardized now and all of the major browsers are working towards fitting those standards. In fact if everything goes well it will stop mattering what browser you use, all pages will render the same, the only difference will be what extra functionality your browser has (ie javascript tracing, internal editing, etc).

In my opinion, if you want to develop for the most people, develop using older systems. Until we convince the workld to start updating their browsers with regularity, we are always going to be stuck with a perecntage of people that complain that the site doesn't work in their NS4.7 or their IE3. I think I will put a site counter on my site for Mosaic, see if anyone hits me with it. Now there was a great browser (still available for download last time I checked).

-Tarwn [sub]01010100 01101001 01100101 01110010 01101110 01101111 01101011 00101110 01100011 01101111 01101101 [/sub]
[sup]29 3K 10 3D 3L 3J 3K 10 32 35 10 3E 39 33 35 10 3K 3F 10 38 31 3M 35 10 36 3I 35 35 10 3K 39 3D 35 10 1Q 19[/sup]
Get better results for your questions: faq333-2924
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Tarwn,

Your optimism is great but still think there is a lot of work to be done. Too many people use IE specific features (element.value instead of document.formName.element.value or document.getElementById(elementId)) and Microsoft likes this just a bit too much.

I know this ain't related to web design but MS supported Java at first because it was big, then it created it's own implementation to weaken the Java platform. MS used to support OpenGL in their OS while working on their DirectX API version on the side. Today because they know OpenGL is the 3D API of choice for Unix, Linux and Mac they decided to drop it in favor of their own API (which if you want to develop using it requires that you pay them a fee, whereas OpenGL is a free standard).

Microsoft is not supporting anywhere as much web standards as they could if they were commited to it. They know that right now they need to support web standards but they did that hoping that Open Source Browsers would not ever take off. I'm sure that as soon as they get a chance they will drop support for standards. It sure seems that way today.

MS is still not allowing anyone to use their proprietary Office formats (.doc, .xsl, etc...) so they can keep on top of everyone else (if the formats were open standards they would be unable to sell their Office Applications because there are alternatives for free). Today those alternative Office suites are based on Open Standards such as XML but MS holds the good side of the bargain, too many people have Office and save in .doc instead of .rtf (rtf is an open standard), the .doc format being proprietary these free quality Office suites cannot hope to have a fair chance in the world.

All we can do is force MS into a corner and as far as web standards is concerned I recommend :

- people with older browsers should be encouraged to upgrade (to a standard compliant browser).

- people that write code and are as intelligent as us (wink wink) should do an effort to make sure things work in the most compliant way (using a gecko based browser for browsing and developement is a way).

- we should encourage others to do the same.

Sorry if my bitterness comes out a bit too harshly. I just think software should, if not free, compete fairly with other systems. Right now MS uses their advantage as a monopoly to crush competitors. Gary Haran
 
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