Mozilla loaded up for browser wars.

ZDNet Reviews ^ | 4/26/2002 | Rex Baldazo

[jigsaw]

Mac users should also consider iCab (www.icab.com).

Although it's still being developed, it's small, fast and very customizable (is that a word?)

[dwollmann]

Nope, sorry, there's already a Kool-Aid flavor for that one. You see, "Microsoft doesn't care, they want to get rid of AOL's customer base anyway."

[Bush2000]

Maybe over in the windows domain, but still going strong in the unix/linux domain.

Which is to say ... nonexistent.

[Bush2000]

I understand that the 35 million AOL users are going to be getting a new browser soon. Do you know which rev. of IE it is?

Hard to say, Nick. AOL is using Mozilla with Compuserve (their online-ghetto service) but there are no indications that they're going to use it for the larger AOL service. Remember: These are the same guys that tried to use AOL mail for all internal, failed miserably, and told their various business units that they were free to go back to using MS Outlook/Exchange. All in all, with these clowns running the show, the future doesn't look bright for Mozilla ...

I sometimes do web sites, so I have to be up on anything that tens of millions of people are going to be using.

Try IE6. Guaranteed to get tens of millions of users. Mozilla is more of a crapshoot at present. ;-p

[upchuck]

Hate AOL and Microsloth. Never used 'em, never will. AOL is a bloat. And MS is so full of security holes. I was a fan of Netscape. Ran V4.7. Did real good for me. But more and more web pages wouldn't load properly. So I upgraded to V6.2. Even paid $20 for the book and CD. Oh, what a disappointment! No way to import a .csv file into the email address book. Says you can in the documentation, but the facility just isn't there. So I went back to email from V4.7 (which has always worked fine; 'twas the browser I was having trouble with). Then I discoverd some weird stuff in the V6.2 browser. Ya know what "focus" is? It's the area of the current window that's "live." If you type, it shows up in the area of the window that has the focus. Son in the V6.2 browser, the fine folks at Netscape decided the URL dialogue box should get the focus. So if I choose a web page from a bookmark, when the page loads, the focus is in the URL dialogue box. What a stupid thing. If I hit the spacebar to page down, I don't page down; I just typed a space character after the URL displayed in the URL dialogue box. I have to click in the browser window to change focus to that window and THEN I can use the spaceabr to page down. Why'd they change this? They had it right in V4.7 and blew it in V6.2.

Bookmarks: in V4.7 you could have close to 100 bookmarks displayed on the screen at a time. In 3 or columns. In V6.2, they went the "XP" route and you get one column that ya gotta scroll up and down in to find what you need. If you ahve 100 bookmarks and want the next to last one, you'll be scrolling for awhile.

So I downloaded Opera. WHAT A JOY! Fast, easy to use, bookmark handling that makes sense. A terrific product! And I don't find the ads all that bothersome. On my 14" notebook screen, the ads are in a box about .75" tall and 5.25" wide in the upper right of the screen. And it doesn't take away from browser space because the navigation buttons (bach, fwd, reload, etc.) are to the left of the window.

I've been very impressed with Opera. Give it a try if you're fed up w/ Netscape and IE.

[Bush2000]

In my experience it is faster than IE. Large pages render much faster for me. Crashes less too. I hope MS gets pissed at the constant error reports I have XP send them whenever IE crashes.

Where do you buy your Kool-Aid?

[chance33_98]

Which is to say ... nonexistent.

Not in my experience. Just got back from visiting with a company that not only has a whole floor of massive sun servers but over half their desktops were sun workstations. In most cases though, you are correct, but still a lot of people out there running unix and Linux (universities, research facilities, etc) who like to browse the web. Microsoft dominiates the market, but they do not own it :) (note: I run 4 win2000 servers at home, plus .net server, XP, unix, and linux - use IE on win machines, netscape on the others)

[general_re]

Then I discoverd some weird stuff in the V6.2 browser. Ya know what "focus" is? It's the area of the current window that's "live." If you type, it shows up in the area of the window that has the focus. Son in the V6.2 browser, the fine folks at Netscape decided the URL dialogue box should get the focus. So if I choose a web page from a bookmark, when the page loads, the focus is in the URL dialogue box. What a stupid thing.

Indeed. That's the one thing that drives me up a wall about 6.2 - it's very annoying to keep fighting it.

[Nick Danger]

Compuserve (their online-ghetto service)

I am not sure what an "online-ghetto service" is. Perhaps you would care to elaborate, assuming you have permission to step off the talking points. If it's just a word you have to use to keep your job, I understand.

[Nick Danger]

That's the one thing that drives me up a wall about 6.2

Are you talking about 6.2.1? I don't get that behavior. The focus appears to be in rendering window, because the up- and down-arrow keys scroll the page.

[bobwoodard]

Which is to say ... nonexistent.

I guess it depends on where you hang out?

[bobwoodard]

I've been very impressed with Opera. Give it a try if you're fed up w/ Netscape and IE.

In addition to Opera, I'd suggest Mozilla (Mozilla <> Netscape). It doesn't exhibit the focus behavior you mention, thank goodness!

[general_re]

Yeah, 6.2.1, but it's very annoying, because it only seems to do that on FR, IIRC.

I think it might be something to do with the prefs - I have FR set to automatically spawn a new window when I click on a link to a thread. So when I click to open a thread, the new window spawns, but the focus is set to the URL bar instead of the window itself - if I hit page down or the arrow key to scroll down, it just pulls down the URL list instead of scrolling, unless I change the focus myself.

I wonder if it's some combination of NS and the JScript FR uses, because if I right-click and select "open in new window", it doesn't do that. Anyway, set your prefs that way and try it for yourself, if you like.

[Neologic]

What about Galeon (http://galeon.sourceforge.net/)? While it is based on the rendering engine of Mozilla (and requires Gnome), its the best web browser I have ever used- handles all the web sites that I visit and is very stable. Of course its free and probably best thing to install if you know your way around Linux.

And for those KDE fans, how is the new version of Konquerer? I have heard good things about it, but have yet to try it.

The browser wars are not over- They would have to pry my keyboard away from my cold dead hands...err wrong topic, sorry.

[ikka]

Nick, Mozilla simply isn't relevant anymore. The browser war is over. Netscape lost. Fold your tent and go home.

IE does not run on Linux or any other form of Unix aside from Solaris and maybe HPUX. In any case the IE versions for Unix do not have the features that the Windows version does.

Linux is starting to replace Windows on some folks' desktops; expect this trend to continue.

[Nick Danger]

Mozilla is more of a crapshoot at present. ;-p

That changes the day AOL adopts it (or Netscape). No one is going to ignore 35 million users; it doesn't make business sense. All that stuff you guys put in IIS that breaks Netscape will have to be taken out, or your customers will start pitching IIS out the door. Companies are not going to cut themselves off from 35 million potential customers just so they can keep their Microsoft rep happy.

This is a big spear you guys are going to take. It's going to foul up the .NET strategy something fierce. You might have to actually make it open. In hindsight you probably should have bought Netscape yourselves, instead of leaving it out where AOL could get it. I'm sure that was proposed somewhere along the line; whoever shot it down made a mistake.

[Dales]

iCab rocks.

10 features, that you don't find in other browsers

1. Blocking advertising

   iCab can block certain images (Browser/Filter settings), it can also prevent that popup-windows containing advertising will be automatically opened (using InScript filters). It is very easy to define such filters. Just control-click on the image (or in the popup-window) that should be blocked. The contextual menu will open where you can choose "Image/Filter Image" (or "Page/InScript Filter).

2. Kiosk mode

   While in Kiosk mode iCab will cover the whole screen and all other applications are blocked. The Kiosk mode is the ideal environment when the computer should be used in a public place (like fairs, exhibitions, hotels etc.) where people should be able to get informations but nobody is allowed to access the system. Additionally, the access can be restricted to certain pages.

3. Error protocol (Smiley)

   iCab records all HTML errors of Web pages. A smiley will show if the HTML code is OK, the smiley will be green and smiling. Errors make the smiley red and sad. By clicking the smileys iCab will open a window where all the found errors are listed with a small description. At http://validator.w3.org/ you can also test web pages using the official validator of the W3C.

4. Portable web archives

   HTML pages can be stored in a compact ZIP-file, including all images of the page. The advantage of the ZIP format is that you can use it under DOS/Windows, Unix/Linux and nearly all other operating systems as well. The ZIP archive uses compression to save hards disk space.

5. Download manager

   HTML pages can be downloaded including all the linked pages (the depth can be configured), so that one can later access these contents off-line without having to go online again.

6. Link manager

   A split window opens with all links on the left side. Pick one of it and the respective site appears on the right side of the window. Using the link manager you can comfortably search through long lists of links (for example the result of a search engine) without the need to open new windows.

7. Source code manager

   The source code of a page can be displayed in an editor. iCab is able to automatically reload and re-display the page whenever the HTML code is saved in the editor.

8. No system extensions

   iCab doesn't install any system extensions and it doesn't modify any of the system settings.

9. Open web page in new window

   A link can be opened in a new window with Command-Click. With Shift-Command-Click, this window is opened in the background so that the main page remains on top and can be read first. When you are finished with the main page you can switch to the other pages.

10. Highly configurable

    iCab is highly configurable. You can configure which Cookies should be accepted and which should be rejected. You can select which menu items are displayed in the contextual menu, web pages can be read aloud and much more.

    iCab does also help to remove many annoying things from web pages, like scrolling text message in the status-line which make the status-line useless, windows that alter their size or position automatically, web pages that switch off all the navigation tollbars etc. All this can be done without completely disabling the technology that is used for these things, like this is the case in all other browsers.

    Certainly, iCab has much more features than you can examine in one day. But you can grow with it.

Other features include being able to filter images based on domain, based on size, etc. About the only downsides to it are CSS implementation is not yet up to snuff and some Javascript causes problems. But overall, it is my browser of choice.

[Physicist]

I still like lynx. I know I'm alone in that.

Lynx saved my bacon the other night. I was at home, and needed to access some web-based information that was only reachable through a virtual private network. There was no way to set up my home machine to be part of the VPN. So what I did was to SSH to a unix box on the VPN and fire up Lynx from the command line. Clumsy, but effective.

[Clara Lou]

I'd been using IE5, and then 6, ever since Netscape was contaminated by AOL. I've been very happy with IE6, but I decided to try Opera. You may think IE is snappy, but try Opera, and you'll know what "snappy" really means.