Posted: Saturday, March 25, 2000 ~ 11:45 PM
I'm with Bump: "I think I could spend about a month just working on my personal projects and all of the books I want to read right now and still not be completely satisfied."
Just read the ALA article on Gecko. Sure, a fully-W3C-standard-compliant browser is a good thing, but its adoption is far from guaranteed. The problem is that end-users don't care about whether or not a browser is compliant to standards. They want a browser that works, that is fast, and that is easy to use.
The first choice of browser for a user will always be the browser they are supplied with. For arguments sake, lets limit the discussion to the two largest suppliers of browsers: Microsoft and AOL. Most computers that are used for surfing are running some flavor of Windows, and by extention, IE. As far as I know, AOL is also supplying it's users with some version of IE as their browser of choice. This, in addition to the fact that there is no real alternative IE5 out there, is why MS/IE dominates the browser market.
The one and only way that Gecko will make any impact is if, as stated in the ALA article, AOL makes Netscape Navigator 6 (which will use Gecko) the default browser for all AOL users. If AOL users have no choice to but use NN6, then that substantial part of the market share is locked in. Whether that share will grow beyond the AOL user base depends upon the stability, speed, and ease-of-use of NN6.
From what I've seen of Mozilla so far (I've downloaded M14 at work and tried unsuccessfully a few times to use it as my main browser), AOL has a lot of work left to do before NN6 is a contender in this race. I don't care how standard-compliant the browser is. If it's not fast, stable, and easy-to-use, people won't use it. And if people won't use it, then I can't code to it.
Please, AOL, do not drop the ball on this one.
(I'm not so worried about this issue. Eventually, MS will come out with full standard support, if only because they have nothing left to do.)§
Just read the ALA article on Gecko. Sure, a fully-W3C-standard-compliant browser is a good thing, but its adoption is far from guaranteed. The problem is that end-users don't care about whether or not a browser is compliant to standards. They want a browser that works, that is fast, and that is easy to use.
The first choice of browser for a user will always be the browser they are supplied with. For arguments sake, lets limit the discussion to the two largest suppliers of browsers: Microsoft and AOL. Most computers that are used for surfing are running some flavor of Windows, and by extention, IE. As far as I know, AOL is also supplying it's users with some version of IE as their browser of choice. This, in addition to the fact that there is no real alternative IE5 out there, is why MS/IE dominates the browser market.
The one and only way that Gecko will make any impact is if, as stated in the ALA article, AOL makes Netscape Navigator 6 (which will use Gecko) the default browser for all AOL users. If AOL users have no choice to but use NN6, then that substantial part of the market share is locked in. Whether that share will grow beyond the AOL user base depends upon the stability, speed, and ease-of-use of NN6.
From what I've seen of Mozilla so far (I've downloaded M14 at work and tried unsuccessfully a few times to use it as my main browser), AOL has a lot of work left to do before NN6 is a contender in this race. I don't care how standard-compliant the browser is. If it's not fast, stable, and easy-to-use, people won't use it. And if people won't use it, then I can't code to it.
Please, AOL, do not drop the ball on this one.
(I'm not so worried about this issue. Eventually, MS will come out with full standard support, if only because they have nothing left to do.)§