Mozilla on AOS4

[mikeymike]

@ sTix

What version of Mozilla are you using?  Mozilla has come a seriously long way in a short while.  Ideally you should be using 1.2.1 or 1.3.

[mikeymike]

@ mips_proc

IE sets the standerds... it dosent follow them...

I'm sure Microsoft would love to hear you and more people say that :-)

IE has about as in touch with the standards as a tequila worm is with reality!  Browse around www.w3.org, particularly the CSS section with IE 6x, Mozilla 1.3 and Opera 7x, and also the Complexspiral Demo.  IE's attempt at rendering some of these pages is an absolute joke compared to how good they look in standards-compliant web browsers like Mozilla and Opera 7x.

[mikeymike]

@ mips_proc

When designing a website, you should check the most likely target browsers.  If you run a website with Amiga-related stuff, you should be checking with Amiga-based browsers as well.  I don't give any particular special priority to making sure that everything works in IE, I check with IE6, Opera 7, Mozilla, and IBrowse when I do any web design.


And here's a hilarious one - very recently (it is fixed now), the MS support site worked *better* with Opera 7 than it did IE :-)  If you go to
the MS support site, and try to do a search for just Windows 2000, in IE you couldn't see it in the list, in Opera you could :-)

[mikeymike]

@ Tomas

Why do you think 95% uses it? Cause of webmasters like YOU!

There's a bigger reason before that - MS bundling IE with Windows.

[mikeymike]

@Tomas

Very true... But if webmasters didnt care too much about the special IE "standards" then ppl would finally see other browsers as a better alternative to IE, since IE dosent render the websites right.

Take a look at 99% of Windows user's desktops.  You'll find the default desktop colour background still in use.  What does this tell you? :-)

[mikeymike]

@ Jose

Of course they would, but incase you hadn't noticed, the subject of this thread is "Mozilla on AOS4" :-)

[mikeymike]

@ Ponos2D

As I recall, there will be Ibrowse3.0 for OS4, with all latest standards!

Considering how long it's taken armies of developers to get other web browsers to support all the latest, do you really think IBrowse can make such a jump from its state in 2.3 to 'supporting all the latest' in 3.0?  I think not.

And that's not having a go at the guys who develop IBrowse, it's just a fact.  If one browser has armies of developers behind it, and the other has only a handful, which is more likely to finish first?

[mikeymike]

@ gnarly

You *know* what I mean, smarta***! :-)

Erm, what's Mozilla got to do with GTK+ or QT?  I could be very very wrong, and I would be very very surprised, but I thought that was the point of using their own home-grown GUI design standard (XUL is it?), so that it was more open to porting across platforms....

AOS4 needs an up-to-date standards compliant web browser.  Opera 7x, Mozilla or a.n.other Gecko-based browser, take your pick people!

If someone wants to give me the world's fastest crash course in C, I'll help out on the Mozilla/AmigaOS port... I've got as far as successfully writing a few programs with gcc! :-)

(Mozilla 1.3 user here)

[mikeymike]

@ mips_proc

If you want to support/condone some of the worst business practices the world has ever seen, I guess that's up to you :-)

Personally I like to keep the playing field as open as possible, and let the best product get the greatest share of the market.  The only way that can be done is by supporting standards, not only browsers.

Also remember that if Microsoft invented the Internet, like they keep trying to tell everyone they did, the only way you'd be able to connect to it would be (after the complimentary Internet Product Activation, involving the divulging of half your personal details and a chunk of your credit card limit) only through an "MS approved Internet accessibility product".  Is that something you'd like to condone as well, or do you prefer the idea that anyone with any machine that has the capability to access the Internet to be able to?

[mikeymike]

@ L8-X

How is that agreeing with mips? :-)

Mips is basically saying why should anyone bother developing for anything other than IE, as 95% of worldwide users use that.

The fact that most people use IE isn't being debated, and it's not something likely to change very quickly.  If the antitrust court case(s) had gone better, then maybe IE would either have been unbundled, (or now thinking about it, preferably...) forced to adhere to the standards 100%.  Then the fact that 95% of people use it doesn't affect the people that don't.

[mikeymike]

@ mips_proc

I do support standerds...IE is a standerd...

Yes, about as much as MS Word format is a standard.

I dont make money by giving a client a webpage that uses some standerds they never heard of and loads poorly on their computer but loads nicely on some nerds computer

Erm, if you designed a web page that works in Mozilla, it's a damn sight more likely to work in other browsers.

I think if they un-bundled IE from windows... it would just add to the cost of IE ..

IE is free.

OEM's like Dell/etc would still put IE onto windows and just charge an extra ammount for it and for doing it...

Any OEM that did that would be a dead OEM very quickly, as it would't be the attitude generally taken, as OEMs know their customers want a web browser.  In the old days, Netscape used to be bundled.  Did any OEMs charge for that?  I don't think so.  On the other hand, I think if an OEM were to advertise a registered copy of Opera with their PC bundle, it would receive a warm reception.

It's the year 2003 guys... people want more features in their OS...a TCP/IP stack and a browser are 'basic' things...part of the OS itself...this is a networked world...an OS isnt an OS without the ability to get online and browser the web... any court would rule thats the case...

Which is why I said it would be a preferable solution to force MS to make IE standards-compliant.

Expanding on my opinion about this, I think any software that gets bundled with an OS should be standards compliant, as it only hurts the evolution of the software market to do otherwise.  Standards compliant software 9 times out of 10 is going to be more future-proof. as people coming up with the standards aren't primarily trying to line their pockets with money as a direct result of the standard.  It's like MS's laughable stand on making Office 2003 "open" by using XML, then as usual, going back on what they said because they realise it might compromise their strangle-hold on the office software market.

A world with only one software company is one that receives very little innovation in software design, because quite frankly, why bother innovating when you can just squeeze more money out of your customer base by forcing them to "upgrade" all the time to a virtually identical "new" product.  Look at Office for example: same old security problems since Word 6, and only the most minor changes for the better have come in since.  Microsoft however would very much like you to pay 500 quid for the privilege of the same old security problems, a more bloated product with even more bizarre bugs than previous versions had (let's talk about the Office 2k registration bug shall we?).  Do you think that's innovation?

Most companies or free software movements understand that in order to continue getting revenue, they have to innovate.  Doing the opposite is possible, MS are a testament to that, but it just screws up the evolution of what IT has to offer.

[mikeymike]

I support free-market...if MS wants to they can market windows with whatever they want...

You can't say you support a free market if you refuse to support standards-compliant browsers.  You only support MS.

MSWord format is a standerd because the market dictates its a standerd... everyone uses it ...so it became standerd...not some evil conspiracy...

I never suggested an evil conspiracy at any point.  With HTML, MS adheres to the standards only as far as it has to, then does its very best to derail other browsers by parting from the standards.

You have the word "standard" conveniently confused.  What most people refer to as standards in this context are *open standards*.  Ones that anyone can write software that adheres to them without having to pay a license, because quite frankly, most software vendors compete on the notion of the best product getting the greatest market share.

I'm not against the idea of an operating system or any piece of software having 95% of the market share.  I'm only become against it when it is employing tactics that should be downright illegal to enforce its market share.

Netscape didn't "suck" at the time, Netscape 2 and 3 wiped the floor with the competition, and IE4 swang the balance in its favour because it was a better overall product (I say product because of Outlook Express as well, on merit).  Netscape should have responded with a significantly better Netscape 5 but for some reason didn't, entirely their own fault.  However, MS at the time were busy with their usual tactics to enforce IE usage, so that didn't help either.  I suggest you go read up on your browser history.

about site design... if I make something 100% Mozilla compliant...and it works with EVERY other browser except IE it dosent matter... I still failed...if it dosent load perfect in windows on IE it's a failure... average joe uses windows or a mac with IE on it...

Unless you try your very hardest to make a site non-IE compatible, I'd like to see you manage such a feat.  If you actually TRIED Mozilla for website browser testing it might help, because, quite frankly, you're talking out of your hat, practically speaking.  In theory of course, you're perfectly correct here, but the theory doesn't match the reality.

Website design and browser testing, if you do the job the way it should be done, has its PITA elements sometimes, but quite frankly so does every other techie job on the planet.  I could get away without the PITA elements of my normal job, a Windows sysadmin, if I chose to be totally ignorant of everything I know about Windows and just do default installs all the time, but I know that to do the job properly sometimes it requires those kind of annoying times.  How many web designers believe they can get away without proper browser testing is beyond me, people like that command about as much respect as Long John Silver's parrot.

[mikeymike]

I test sites... I test with IE and forget it...

Funny.

but if as you said it's hard to make a site non-mozilla compatible then why is there an argument? if mozilla supports all these standerds 'perfectly' then whats the problem?

For the fiftieth time... IE doesn't adhere to the standards!

No product is perfect.  Even if all browsers were up-to-date and adhered to the standards, you'd still have to do a bit of cross-browser testing to make sure, because the standards don't write everything in stone down to the last pixel, what they do try to do is make sure that you'll get a pretty damn close approximation between all standards-compliant browsers.  Oh God, you have to do some tedious testing, that little bit of extra work, let me just find the world's smallest violin to play for you and every other lazy-ass web designer on the planet.

[mikeymike]

You mean like this? :-)

[mikeymike]

@ mips_proc

And if you couldn't browse any websites whatsoever because every webmaster was as enlightened as your good self, would that annoy you?

It's only through standards compliancy that you can see *anything at all* for some websites when using say IBrowse, the standards are designed with some backwards compatibility in mind as well.

Can you provide a few URLs to websites you've designed please?