Mike Cornall: There is Nothing Wrong With MozillaWednesday August 2nd, 2000Mike Cornall has written a piece for Linux Today titled "There is Nothing Wrong With Mozilla". In it, Mr. Cornall makes the case for Mozilla, arguing against some misconceptions and mischaracterizations in a piece that appeared at osOpinion.com. There is also another piece at osOpinion.com, this one by Erik Severinghaus, which is also worth checking out. Thanks to Mozillazine for linking my article. I know my article is long, and people might not read to the end. Therefore, if I may be so bold, I would like to quote one part, near the bottom, that I am hoping might help to inspire the Mozilla developers: > I think most would agree that Microsoft "won" the browser war. I don't agree at all. Within two years: 1. 10% or more of desktop users will be running Linux. 2. 10% or more of Internet users will be using an Internet appliance or game console (probably running Mozilla). 3. 10% or more of Internet users will be AOL (former IE) users running Netscape. 4. 10% or more of Internet users will be existing Windows Netscape users who held out for Mozilla. Thus, in two years, IE's percentage of the browser market will be down to 60%, and still dropping. A business would be very foolish to standardize on IE-only Internet protocols, because it will cause them to lose a lot of clients. Good to see a pro mozilla article. I've showed some of the latest builds around here and have convinced people to make sure their websites will work in Mozilla and then people start reading the bad press and wondering why they should bother as no one will download it. We need to get this sorted out if we can't convince people that Mozilla is worth waiting for then it may come a time when developers won't really care about Netscape. Mozilla can only be ready when it's ready but we need plenty of pro mozilla artices around to keep the interest going. As for the current usability of Mozilla, it's my browser of choice on most platforms at the moment. I'm trying to see how long I can go on using Netscape 4.73 on this machine before the urge to install mozilla becomes overwhelming ;) Some of the nightly builds lately have been excellent that they're definitely usable as my primary browser. There's only a few problems: AFAIK you still need glibc 2.1 or above to run on Linux (so some machines I can't use it on) I've only tried it on fairly powerful machines (128MB mem and 300MHz +) back in the days when I had only 64MB RAM mozilla used to use up the memory very quickly although I'm sure these memory bugs have been mostly fixed. The default Modern skin (first impressions and all that) will put off quite a few people. Some people like it so it should be there but make classic as default as people are familiar with it, also introduce a skin with icons similar to IE (if it's legal for Netscape to do so) and one with the icons from the pre-modern skin (the early milestones). Shieldwolf-Mozbilla is an IE-like chrome for Mozilla: download it at x.themes.org. http://x.themes.org/ I use it under Windows, it's faster than the hideous Modern skin. I know of such a skin and I like it but most Netscape 6 users are going to stick with the default theme (which hopefully will be changed to classic) and the ones who explore the prefs may just stick with the ones already available. So I think Netscape 6 should come with an IE theme alongside the others. There should be an option for items to be listed in the themes menu that aren't installed on the hard disk but are downloaded when the user first requests the theme. This would save users disk space. Please, please, please Netscape ship with classic by default or I can be sure you'll get quite a bit of poor first impressions. We all like classic don't get me wrong, but it's for Netscape the actual netscape! This is mozilla... I think it's better that we give it it's own skin. Some people see mozilla when it comes out as a software that took years and years to make and to he AVERAGE user it'll seem too much like netscape and wont see it all that worth while. Mozilla has little relations with netscape. mozilla is a software that's going to be it's first versions and it's going to be a great alternattive to IE. new appearances is what attracts people. I just finished reading Mike's article and was impressed by his comprehensive understanding of software development in general and of the Mozilla project in particular. His critique of the other author is devastating. The article was long, but every point was valid. Thanks, Mike. a browser that use 99 MB of memory after a few hours of browsing is not very well-suited to Internet Appliance or game Console (unless you have heard of a game console with 256 MB of memory ) Linux is more a server OS than a desktop OS (very few people use it professionaly for desktop : less than 0.1 % probably) so don\'t count on Linux to increase the Market Share of Mozilla (i think Solaris workstation would be more efficient here) If other windows user don\'t want to use Mozilla because it is too slow, or eats too much memory why would Aol users do so (they can change the default browser)! And has Communicator is more stable (less code, less bloat) people will continue to use it . I heard your answer : \"Mozilla is developpement\". But mozilla is unstable because of his bad archictecture (XUL and so on) not because of it is not finished. If Netscape can makes his bloated Mozilla product works why nobody has achieved the same result with other bloated product like MS Office or Win 2K ! It is not a matter of time : too much line of code mean code that will never works ! Just wanna leave a note: I have tried Last night's Mozilla build, and it's AWESOME, greatly improved since that PR1. Keep up the good job Just wanna leave a note: I have tried Last night's Mozilla build, and it's AWESOME, greatly improved since that PR1. Keep up the good job |