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Tech doesn't buoy Netscape browser
CNET News.com ^
| August 28, 2002, 9:32 AM PT
| Matthew Broersma
Posted on 08/28/2002 12:52:10 PM PDT by Bush2000
Tech doesn't buoy Netscape browser
Despite new technology, Netscape continues to lose ground to Internet Explorer, which now has well over 90 percent of the market. A twice-yearly study from StatMarket, a division of WebSideStory, showed that despite recent technological advances, AOL Time Warner's Netscape Communications browsers, which use technology from the open-source Mozilla project, have ceded more ground to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
According to the study, Netscape browsers are losing market share at a steady clip, falling to a new low of 3.4 percent as of this week. A year ago, Netscape' market share stood at 13 percent, but fell steeply to 7 percent by March as IE 6 gained popularity.
"The newest versions of Netscape have failed to win over users so far," Geoff Johnston, vice president of product marketing for StatMarket, said in a statement. "Unless AOL makes a move soon, Netscape may find itself battling Opera for the last 1 percent to 2 percent of the market."
IE has now reached 96 percent market share, according to StatMarket, up from 87 percent a year ago. Mozilla gained some market share when it finally launched a 1.0 release earlier this year, but browsers such as Mozilla and Opera still only accounted for less than 1 percent of the market, StatMarket said.
AOL's plans for boosting Netscape market share hinge on the possibility of introducing Netscape as the basis for the integrated AOL Web browser, which would put it into the hands of tens of millions of consumers. AOL has taken steps toward this end with a version of its CompuServe service that uses Netscape's Gecko Web-page rendering engine, and a new test version of AOL for Mac OS X that also uses Netscape technology.
At this point, however, competing browsers face an increasingly difficult task in battling the IE monolith. Because of its market dominance, Web designers generally test their pages on IE alone, with the result that pages sometimes do not render correctly in other browsers--even if those browsers are more standards-compliant than IE.
Netscape has begun actively tracking down popular Web sites that do not render correctly in its browser and encouraging the sites to fix the errors. The company said it has now eradicated errors from most popular sites.
StatMarket gathers its figures from more than 125,000 sites that use its services.
TOPICS: Business/Economy; Technical
KEYWORDS: browser; netscape
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To: SamAdams76
Instead of fixing their browser to properly display the websites, they are asking the websites to reprogram their code to accomodate them! Mozilla is built to be compliant with W3C specs for HTML, Javascript, etc. If a page won't render correctly in Mozilla (ergo NS 6 and 7) it means the site was built specifically for IE. If the site uses IE specific features and not W3C standards then you shouldn't expect Netscape to load it properly. What Netscape is doing is saying "WRITE TO THE F%#$ING ACCEPTED STANDARDS!!!!" in a more polite way. Many users have been bitching about this for years. The Mozilla hackers are more concerned with standards that'll work consistantly on all supported platforms, not locking in developers.
61
posted on
08/29/2002 10:10:11 AM PDT
by
dheretic
To: gitmo
You might want to try K-Meleon. It's a Win32 front end for the Mozilla renderer. URL: http://sourceforge.net/projects/kmeleon In my experience it, Galeon (GNOME version) and Chimera (OSX) are damn fast compared to IE, NS, etc.
62
posted on
08/29/2002 10:15:38 AM PDT
by
dheretic
To: AdA$tra
As a desktop, Linux is just a toy. When did you last use Linux? I'm using KDE 3.1 beta, and it continues to make great strides towards usability for the unwashed masses.
They have VNC seamlessly built into this version, so that anyone that can click a mouse can allow someone to help them remotely.
LAN browsing works just as easily as Network Neighborhood in Windows, except that it also shows any HTTP or FTP shares.
With KDE and StarOffice, most office workers would be able to accomplish their work. They might not be able to open and run those email viruses, though. :-)
Linux isn't for everyone (i.e., graphic designers), but it's come a long way, and gets better every day. I've used it exclusively for my desktop for years.
63
posted on
08/29/2002 10:22:53 AM PDT
by
B Knotts
To: dheretic
The Mozilla team doesn't have that luxury. They have to be a bit more conscious of the potential problems with releasing bad code.
Welcome to Fantasyland. Open source hasn't prevented bad code from being released. Mozilla is a buggy piece of crap, just like most other software.
64
posted on
08/29/2002 10:43:35 AM PDT
by
Bush2000
To: B Knotts
When did you last use Linux?
Doesn't really matter...Although I have a brand new install of Mandrake on an old server in my basement. I just am not willing to support all the interoperability issues when we have literally thousands of clients using MS office. Even if Star Office works fine with Excel and Word files....are you going to take all the calls from the idiot accounting clerks I support. You MS haters are really ignorant when it comes to practical solutions. Hate MS at any cost, regardless of the ROI. I guarantee something, some day will come along and end the MS dominance of today's market. It just has to be truly better, not just an imitation of the Windows paradigm that works almost as well.
65
posted on
08/29/2002 10:46:03 AM PDT
by
AdA$tra
To: dheretic
Here are advisories for the Apache web server:
66
posted on
08/29/2002 10:50:25 AM PDT
by
Bush2000
To: AdA$tra
You sound like a Linux hater. I simply suggested that Linux is not a toy. It may not work well for you, but that doesn't make it a toy.
67
posted on
08/29/2002 11:51:33 AM PDT
by
B Knotts
To: B Knotts
You sound like a Linux hater.
If I was a "Linux hater," as you suggest, there would be oodles of virii infecting Linux systems all over the world!
68
posted on
08/29/2002 11:58:59 AM PDT
by
AdA$tra
To: Bush2000
You know where the Apache server got its name. No, it isn't a violation of the sacred Native Tribe. It is short for A Patchy Server!
69
posted on
08/29/2002 12:00:29 PM PDT
by
AdA$tra
To: B Knotts
They have VNC seamlessly built into this version, so that anyone that can click a mouse can allow someone to help them remotely.
If you need VNC, it is a free download for any platform. It is installed on my screaming new Inspiron 8200. Don't tell anyone I'm running XP, because I have got time for the flames.
70
posted on
08/29/2002 12:03:27 PM PDT
by
AdA$tra
To: AdA$tra
It is short for A Patchy Server! Because the majority of its contributions were written by a diverse group of people and supplied as patches. A patchy server because it was patched by so many people.
71
posted on
08/29/2002 2:38:37 PM PDT
by
dheretic
To: All
Back to the point of the article, MSIE's market share dominance... :-)
IMO, IE was the biggest blunder that I've ever seen MS commit. I really doubt they will do it again. Let's analyze: They bought the market out from under Netscape. Why? To prevent an upstart from becoming a big player in the computer business? There must be a better reason.
I figured that, after running Netscape down, they would start charging bucks for IE. But they haven't. I contend that, inside MS, IE is seen as a big loadstone around their neck. It is constantly under attack from hackers. They continually patch it for free. Everything related to IE is available for free download. The bandwidth for these downloads is very expensive. In short, IE is a very expensive program to maintain. But where is the return on investment?
They have 96% market share today, but if they asked everyone to send in $50 tomorrow for IE, their market share would probably be less than 25% by the end of next week: There is too much free competition.
Back in the MS's growing years, their approach was different. Apple was the company that wanted profit from every aspect of their computers: They wanted profit from the hardware and the OS, and they wanted to create most the software.
But MS's approach was different. Compared with Apple, MS's was the OS with which you could get "under the hood". MS had the better tools/compilers for building applications. MS became what it is today, in large part, because its OS supported more 3rd party apps than anyone else.
Lately, though, they seem to be taking more of the Apple approach: They want the entire "pie". But, if they have to "buy" business to make this happen, then what's the point? As I recall, the dot-com failures were caused by a lack of money-making activity (although initially fueled by grandiose plans for a website or something). It makes me wonder... Did Balmer hire any of those dot-com MBA's?
To: TheEngineer
I've seen "The Meo" (tm) that Bill sent around that made IE a real product. IE has accomplished exactly what they wantd it to.
There were two big problems Gates saw. First the internet was a standard being used by millions of people that MS hadn't created. More importantly MS had no share in this at all. People should keep this in mind when they complain that IE doesn't follow W3C standards, duh. MS didn't take over this market to be told what the standards are, as evidenced by the number of web developers here that have confessed to coding to IE rather than W3C, IE is the real web interpretting standard. The second thing to keep in mind is that even in the pre-java days browsers were already showing the ability ot be desktop replacements. With form inputs, CGI and Perl the ability was there (though under utilized) to have web apps thatdid everything. That made Netscape a threat to the Windows market.
The problems come in because they had to integrate with the desktop to avoid the Netscape suit (which IMHO was bogus, I've never agreed that monopolies should be banned from normal business practices like loss leaders; the fact that one company that gave the browser away was suing another company trying to force them to charge for the browser shows how idiotic this stuff can get). If they hadn't had to integrate IE to the desktop things would be easier for them, but i think the stability/ security issues they inherrited because of that are considered a small price to pay for accomplishing the goals.
At this juncture they CAN'T ever charge for IE. Not only is integrated deep into the OS it's integrated into most of their software. One of the cool things about browsers is their ability to handle elasticity (moving stuff around in the window while the user resizes it), subsequently browser controls are a crutch that both MS and many OEMs use. Truly amazing amounts of software actually display in a browser window, you'll only know this if you watch the install VERY closely (and then only if you have an old IE on your system), you might be able to see them installing IE.
MS is a lot like Rome. If you check the documentation of Rome's major expansion you see something very interesting. According to Rome all of her expansion was defensive, Rome was (or believed it was) constantly under threat of being destroyed by oustide forces. MS has the same attitude, somewhere in the bowels of Redmond is papers describing how every application out there can be used to destroy MS, subsequently they must crush these clear threats. That's why they want the whole pie, because every piece they don't have could be the key to their destruction.
73
posted on
08/29/2002 3:00:47 PM PDT
by
discostu
To: dheretic
Because the majority of its contributions were written by a diverse group of people and supplied as patches. A patchy server because it was patched by so many people.
If you were caller number nine, I would give you a prize!
74
posted on
08/29/2002 3:27:23 PM PDT
by
AdA$tra
To: dheretic
Looks like AOL won't be using Netscape 7.0 either^.
75
posted on
08/30/2002 7:13:12 AM PDT
by
AdA$tra
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