Site SuggestionsTuesday January 8th, 2002A few of you have asked for us to post a news item taking your suggestions for the site, so here it is. Tell us all your ideas for what we can do to improve the site. Anything you want we'll think about, but try to keep it realistic. Just to keep you updated, one of the things we're planning on working on is getting the ChromeZone up again, if we can find some volunteer editors to help organize themes. If you're interested, please email me and I'll get back to you sometime this week. UPDATE! Right now we're working on dumping all the tables and other old HTML within the site to both show off Mozilla's skills, and to get our file sizes smaller. If you're using Communicator to view the site, you'll notice everything looking pretty ugly, thanks to the poor CSS support it offers. If you're using IE, it'll look a bit better, but thanks to IE's lacking CSS2 support, the sidebar will show up incorrectly. We've completely redone the homepage and talkback code, and we'll be working on the forums next. UPDATE 2! We discovered Google's great "Search Site" feature, and have added it. Right now it has most areas of the site indexed except news item talkback pages. It will start indexing talkback today, and will hopefully add all of the old items, in addition to picking up the new ones. UPDATE 3! We've been working hard to get as many of your suggestions as possible implemented, and we encourage you to continue the feedback. You can check this article's responses for what items we have fixed, or are working on. I think with the forums back, the site is close to perfect! The finest improvement would of course be more frequent build comments :). Tiny improvements: remove the vote. correct image location bug in the build bar forum. Nice to see you're after ideas to improve an already great site. I'd love to see the return of the ChromeZone it was the best theme resource around when it was launched. As for removing the tables and going to an entirely CSS layout, I think that is great, this is a Mozilla advocacy site and should show how 100% correct CSS/HTML renders perfectly in Mozilla. I'd like to see LINK element support like in Slashdot (you need to be logged into Slashdot to see the full effect), basically a prev link to the previous article, a next link to the next article (if there is one yet), up to move upto a higher level in the threads and top to get to the main index. You should also do something about this form saving the subjects in the password manager. Make a link with the top-left MozillaZine title. I can't count the number of times I click on it to go back to the main page ;) Yeah, I'll second that :) - a section for users to post their own customised Bugzilla queries for others to use - a section for users to post Bugzilla/newsgroup/etcetera links to information on interesting new developments wending their way toward the Mozilla trunk - beside the mozdev.org link, links to other worthwhile Mozilla related sites (i.e. MozillaNews, Oreilly Network Mozilla DevCenter, XUL Planet) - drop the boxer shorts One request only: Don't mess with the user's default font size. Not everyone has great vision, some of us get headaches from squinting all day, and I get fed up of zooming to 120%. So when you get rid of that <font size="-1"> tag, don't replicate it in the CSS! Apart from that, I'm really happy. The hardcoded serifed face also annoys me. Also it would be nice to have a real nested mode. I hate clicking on links and following the flatmode is almost impossible. Fixed on front page. Fixed in news talkback. Will work on other areas while converting them to html4. jason Yeah, font size reduction annoys me as well; I like iCab's "Minimum font size" function. But how about adding an entry to "~/.mozilla/$USER/*/chrome/userContent.css": body { font-size: 100% ! important; } Works on this site; sites that mess with more elements may need additional entries in userContent.css. (And that's the UNIX location; I'm not sure where it is on Mac OS... yet.) In the "Post Talkback" form at the bottom of this page, move the Login and Password fields so they're the first two fields in the form. That way, Mozilla's Password Manager will work correctly with the form. Is that how it works? I've been wondering for a while. Hate it when form manager kicks in rather than Password manager as you end up getting the wrong titles etc in the rest of the message I think it is Password Manager that does this. Instead of looking for a field called "Login" or "Username", it just uses the first field on the form. You can see Bug 85777 http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85777 for more details. I and others believe that the Form Manager and Password Manager should have some better logic. For example, the Password Manager could search for a field containing "login" or "user", and if it does not find one use the first field as it currently does. The Form Manager saves a field named "Username" or "Login Name" as the Concatenated Name, so you cannot use the Form Manager on forms that don't work well with the Password Manager, or when you don't want to save the password -- see Bug 79527 http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=79527 for details. The daily buildbar comments are by far the most valuable thing on the site. I know they're a lot of work, but since you asked :) I'd rather see any additional effort put into those rather than into new and other features. I'd also like to see the Build Bar added to the tops of all pages -- it seems odd having it disappear and reappear as I move around the site. It'll also save the bandwidth of me reloading the home page after I read the news and talback articles :) #18 Please put today's build comments on the front pagby briansmith Wednesday January 9th, 2002 11:29 AM I think many people come to Mozillazine primarly to get Asa's build comments. I think having the lastest build comment from Asa appear at the top of the home page (instead of just a link to the build comments page) would be a great convenience. Otherwise, you will get people bookmarking the build page and not seeing new postings on the home page. This would also probably save bandwidth (one page view instead of two) Wonderful idea, but this would take too much room. Now an invisible div that appears on rollover of the link telling you todays info would be fantastic. Couldn't there be a simple thumbs up, down, dunno voting sytem akin to those I see at many sites? I don't tend to find those as helpful as comments from a known person, whose comments you can read regularly. With the thumbs-up/thumbs-down, you've got no idea what good and bad are to the people casting votes. Someone might vote thumbs-down if their favorite RFE isn't added yet, and someone else might vote thumbs-up as long as the thing doesn't crash on startup.... - to reduce bandwidth consumption, gzip everything and use the gz content encoding. Mozilla can handle this, and I think IE can too. It might even be something the web server can negotiate and do on the fly for you. - The greatest resource of this site is the ability to know about the latest build. It would be great if we could vote up and down each daily build, so we don't actually have to wait for comments to be posted. - also on the build comments, the recent addition of the "all bugs fixed since last update" is extremely valuable. If it could be "all bugs fixed since yesterday", and then the date just be updated automatically, it would reduce the load on the person who's actually writing the build bar comments. - also, as you mentionned, removing lots of extraneous tables and going to almost pure CSS for formatting. NS4 is 6 years old now, it's time to move on. "NS4 is 6 years old now, it's time to move on." Six years? Are you sure? I thought it was only four and a half (4.0 was released in mid-1997, right?). Unless this New Year thing has confused me and it's actually 2003. :-) Alex " If it could be "all bugs fixed since yesterday" " there's already a 'Todays's Checkins' link on the right-hand side of the page. and if you use that you don't need to rely so heavily on Asa'a build comments as you can see it all for yourself from peoples' comments and Bugzilla links as they check their code in > It would be great if we could vote up and down each daily build, > so we don't actually have to wait for comments to be posted. MozillaNews http://mozillanews.org/ already has this feature, and also has original news articles. Yeah, a good site. But the voting numbers seem to bounce around arbitrarily... there's two problems I can think of offhand -- first, not enough votes to be meaningful (right now, today's linux build has two votes, MacOS one, Win32 two, and the others none) and second, the number scale means different things to different people. The MozillaZine buildbar is good because it's a consistant metric, and the comments are invaluable for casually following development. Yes, the ratings at MozillaNews do fluctuate a bit due to the currently small sample. But as the sample grows larger (and it has been, especially for the Windows builds), the ratings will become more accurate as individual differences are averaged out. You can see this effect already in the difference between the ratings for the Dec. 9 and 10 Windows builds and the previous days' builds. The ratings show a clear decrease in quality that is not reflected in the Build Bar comments. Add the fact that the ratings are available every day and are available before the Build Bar comments, and I think they make a good supplement to the Build Bar comments. It took me *forever* to find your rss headlines. You should advertize them. XHTML Strict compliance would be fantastic (or at least a DOCTYPE, wink wink nudge nudge). And, as another poster mentioned, the Buildbar is one of the more valuable parts of the site. How about a buildbar mailing list that, even if not containing the day's buildbar comments, could at least let us know when the day's Buildbar comments have been posted? PS Allowing some type of HTML-formatting for the forum posts would be convenient (perhaps just a subset of HTML, Slashdot-like). Alex Bischoff I really don't know and would like to learn. Your html is not valid html until you have a doctype at the top of your document. The doctype tells the browser, which version of html you are writing in. If there is no doctype, the computer is guessing what version of html you are using and may display pages incorrectly. I think the main purpose of document type definitions was to aid the W3C in making Mozilla completely incompatible with the rest of the Internet. They needed something they could claim they created. I do not see any other reason for them to exist. Please read http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/, http://developer.apple.com/internet/html/doctype.html and http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/doctype.html. Please read http://www.bartleby.com/61/58/F0205800.html Adding a DOCTYPE causes modern browsers to lay out web page based on the standards, rather than emulating bugs of past browsers. It also allows you to validate the web page to guarantee that it is free from errors. The problems I have had with pages that do not validate range from crashing the browser to queueing up 1000s of pages when trying to print one page, in both Netscape and IE browsers. Adding a DOCTYPE and validating web pages is probably the easiest and most effective way to make your pages work correctly. You can also read http://web.oreilly.com/news/csstop10_0500.html for a re-iteration of these points. The W3C is not the owner of Mozilla, Tanyel. Doctypes were invented a long, long time ago for SGML, to properly indicate the public DTD of the markup language against which a document should be validated. Validation, of course, is used to make sure that there are no ambiguities in your markup that might confuse a parser or other processor. The use of validated markup distinguishes professionals from incompetents. The doctype tells you, the browser, a search engine etc. on what standard you've based your code. HTML standards change from time to time slightly and less slightly. If you know, what standard applies, you know how to render the page correctly etc. In a lot of cases, it seems like specifying the DOCTYPE really does not make it much more likely that existing browsers will render a page properly. I do not know exactly which versions of which browsers support which specs; nor do I know all of the exact diferences between the various specs. However, based on what I do know, the following would seem to be true. Assume you design your webpages with strict 100% adherence to a specific HTML spec : 1) Rendering by browsers that do not even recognize DOCTYPE will be uneffected by its presence or lack thereof. 2) Whether or not you specify a DOCTYPE, browsers that do not have 100% support for that HTML spec will not render everything exactly right. 3) Whether or not you specify a DOCTYPE, if you strictly use the most recent specs then browsers that support those specs will render everything correctly, but other browsers will not render correctly. (Hmm, I just realized that if the specs say you must specify a DOCTYPE, then I guess you could not adhere 100% to the specs without specifying one. So where I said 100% in the above example, I guess I meant everything except that one part that say DOCTYPE is required.) 4) If your webpages use an outdated spec and your browser uses a newer spec that specifies that specific HTML be handled differently than it was handled previously, then it would be important to specify that you are using an outdated spec. Therefore it seems like it is only important to specify a DOCTYPE when your code does not adhere to current specs or if you are using current specs but do not plan to update your pages to the next gen of specs when they come out. If anyone can provide scenarios that I have ignored here, I would appreciate it. Browsers like Mozilla or even recent versions of Internet Explorer decide by the presence of the DOCTYPE if the document is treated according to a standard or in so called quirks mode which emulates older browsers behaviour. Therefore if your document is 100% in recent standards and you expect it to look like defined in this standard quirks mode may disturb you by behaving like old browsers where the behaviour was diferent than in this recent standard designed. So DOCTYPE doesn't hurt you (except when you really use old quirks instead of standards) but can help you if you code to the standards (and we all do that don't we? ;) I realize specifying your DOCTYPE does not hurt you (provided you specify the right one). My point was that it seems like the only time it really helps ensure your page gets rendered correctly is when your code does not adhere to the current specs. Let see if I can state this so you can't miss the point. --- Your code might adhere to the current specs but without the DOCTYPE new browsers will likely assume it is an old-spec-page and render it in "quirk" mode. Thus, your carefully constructed page gets mangled. --- "Old-spec-pages" are likely not to have a DOCTYPE. If you are going to write an up-to-current-spec-page, then why not add the DOCTYPE!?! What better way is there to tell the browser that you've "done it right" and *not to assume* that the page was constructed work with the "quirks" of old, non-compliant browsers? Simple: --- Your code might adhere to the current specs but without the DOCTYPE new browsers will likely assume it is an old-spec-page and render it in "quirk" mode. Thus, your carefully constructed page gets mangled. --- "Old-spec-pages" are likely not to have a DOCTYPE. If you are going to write an up-to-current-spec-page, then why not add the DOCTYPE!?! What better way is there to tell the browser that you've "done it right" and *not to assume* that the page was constructed to work with the "quirks" of old, non-compliant browsers? That's good, provided the site remains readable/navigable in the older browsers (I don't care if it looks much worse, but you must at least be able to read the text and click on the links if you have an older browser). The reason is simple - this is a Mozilla advocacy site...if someone comes to it who isn't running Mozilla and can't read it, how can we advocate the browser to them ?! It's a classic mistake that several sites "promoting" Mozilla (or variants) have actually made: MozillaNews at http://www.mozillanews.org/ (though this has "slightly" improved recently), MozillaQuestQuest at http://www.mozillaquestquest.com/ and Galeon at http://galeon.sourceforge.net/ are all very difficult (or impossible) to use in Netscape 4.79, which is a huge no-no in my books. I think that moving to a pure CSS based site would be a great idea. I think the looking ugly in NS4 problem is a real one, but one way around it (and one that also helps support other types of non-CSS compliant browsers) is the approach used by Rob Chandanais on his excellent CSS site 'blue robot' (http://www.bluerobot.com) in which he has ordered the page content to be 'meaningful' when viewed without CSS styles: without CSS the page shows as simple text with headings / links etc. With CSS it appears as a very cleanly laid out site. Not sure how easy it would be to extend his approach to a forum such as this - but suspect it could be possible... Regards Gavin Lawrie yeah, I think the doctype should be changed to this since you are not concerned with supporting IE:) <?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN\" \"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd\"> <html xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml\"> if the little new icons we put on all comments i have not read yes and tracked through my cookie i would be quite happy as i try to follow long threads from my machine, my girlfriends and here at work. I would like to be able to search for old messages by keywords so I can find all of the predictions I made that everybody said were wrong, but eventually came true. Search is here, thanks to google. Should start indexing talkback soon, tho i can't help it recording your terrible predictions... :) jason You should fix the broken buildbar images here -> http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback/list.php?f=4 If I close my browser I have to select that setting again. It would be nice to not have to do that :) How about the latest open bug counts extracted from Bugzilla displayed somewhere down the side ? Accurate ones please (i.e. not the ones on the infamous MozillaQuest) - i.e. exclude duplicate, RFEs, worksforme, invalid, fixed - would be nice to a day-to-day percentage change figure so we can see if they're going up or down :-) ChromeZone would be really cool. The chromes on mozilla.org aren\'t being updated that much anymore and there really isn\'t any good place to get them. If ChromeZone was put back in place could the chromes on Netscape\'s theme park be on here as well. googolplex (n/t) 1.text search in all topics and atricles 2.Navigation with Mozilla's Site Navigation bar (Top,Next,Back will be convenient for readers) I would like to see more links to external interesting webpages added: xulplanet, mozillanews, http://www.geocities.com/pratiksolanki/ http://www.mozilla.org/status/ etc -- there is a lot of interesting stuff out there but it is hard to find out about it. Also links to mozilla docs inside and outsite of mozilla.org would be nice. People would get a nice start for questions and information. Mozillazine has developed more or less to the primary mozilla-portal. The date and time (or at least the date) of the latest comment posted to an article, shown next to the number of comments, so people can easily determine whether there are any new comments they haven't read. keep only the most recent 2 articles/news on the home page... the rest can be accessed via another link to "Archives" #46 latest build comment plus latest articles on main?by johann_p Friday January 11th, 2002 1:32 AM i guess many people visit to read the latest build comment. so having the very latest on the primary page would save me a click-and-wait cycle (i am usually just interested in the latest build, if it seems safe i check it, otherwise i wait). Maybe the latest build comment on the very top of the page, and the latest N articles (e.g. last week's) below? Or even better, have a 'regular visitors' page, which contains the lastest buildbar comments and last days' update (so, if it is thursday and there were two news items posted on monday, then they would both be shown, but if one was posted today then only it would be shown). You could put just the headlines of older articles underneath. It is a good thing that all the old HTML3 layout tags are disappering but to there is really no reason to use the table layout css properties. All you have done is to remove the TABLE tags and replaced it with a div that is displayed as a table. You should use float or absolute position instead. Below is a simple layout using abs position for the sidebar and the content fills the rest of the width. As you can see. This is a much nicer solution and does not require any slow table layout algorithms :-) <style type=\"text/css\"> body { margin: 10px; } .header { background: yellow; } .content { background: #eeeeee; margin-right: 100px; } .sidebar { position: absolute; right: 10px; background: lime; width: 100px; } .footer { background: red; } </style> <div class=\"header\"> header </div> <div class=\"sidebar\"> Sidebar<br/> Sidebar<br/> Sidebar<br/> </div> <div class=\"content\"> This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. This the content text. </div> <div class=\"footer\"> Footer </div> Believe me, we tried that. We tried 600 different ways to do that, but it just never worked. We'll stick with the current way until it does. Had we done it that way, the footer would have run over the sidebar, if the content in the main page wasn't long enough. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't you just put all the contents of the page, except for the footer, in a plain div tag? Using tables is not the way. That would replace an evil with another. What you're looking for if you want the footer to be, well, a footer, is a simple clear: both in your css code for the footer. (assumming the main part and the sidebar are using floats of course :) please excuse my bad/ugly english :) put the number of comments posted to an article in the query string of the link from the main page, so that if the number has changed since the last time the user clicked the link, it will display as unvisited. i.e., (a href="talkback.html?article=1234&numComments=4") I'd like to have the ability to view all the of the article comments in nested format. That would save a lot of bandwidth as you wouldn't have to load a bunch of headers/images for each comment that you read. One thing that might be worth a look is Scoop, which is the forum system used on kuro5hin.org It handles comment ratings really well (much better than slash) if you ever want to add ratings. Hi Why Google, ja they got a great mechanical search engine, but it usually only is mirroring dmoz.org and or others. Compare these two links. http://directory.google.com/Top/Kids_and_Teens/School_Time/English/Grammar/ from google of a link page for Kids and Teens and the original page from dmoz.org http://dmoz.org/Kids_and_Teens/School_Time/English/Grammar/ How do I know that this page from dmoz is the original you might ask, well I'm the editor of this dmoz page and I collected all of the links that one finds there. Because we wanted a search engine, not a directory. jason Google has a unique database of sites collected by their own spider. The Google Directory http://directory.google.com/ (which is just a rebranded version of the Open Directory) is a bonus add-on feature. In addition, Google offers several tools http://www.google.com/services/ for adding a site-specific search to a site. Alex I think you should add a few pixels of right padding on the help icon. It looks very tight against the scroll bar. Perhaps pad it by an amount equal to the distance from the images right side to the upright bar image on its left... login/password boxes don't quite line up correctly on here though (Nightly, Linux [MDK8.1]) Do your server logs really say that a majority of visitors are using Mozilla? I'd be really surprised--I think you'd be the only site on the web that has those stats. Although I can see reason to ditch some of the old layout techniques, there's still a lot you should do to make sure the site is usable in older browsers. Old hardware more or less limits me to Netscape 4 or IE and I'd pick Netscape 4 any day over security holes in IE. It seems to me that you're doing a great disservice by changing this site to be essentially limited to one browser. Standards or not, that's no better than an IE-specific site. Of course, I'm using Netscape 4 here which looks fairly terrible. IE4, which I only use for testing, crashed in MSHTML.dll. Perhaps other versions of IE are more tolerable. As a site about Mozilla advocacy, how does it help if it can't be read by exactly the people that need to be persuaded to upgrade? I think there's a reasonable middle ground that you've missed. To show that you can use standards-based HTML and still support all browsers reasonably would be a better approach than kicking out old browsers. Interestingly, ditching the old layout techniques can help older browsers as well as enhance accessibility if done well. Using standard header tags to identify articles in the talkback threads would be nice. Adding a disclaimer about why it look horrible in N4 would also be good. Adding the wrap attribute to the talkback response field would also help N4 and not hurt anyone else. P.S. I use, test, and log bugs against Mozilla nightly builds on an almost daily basis. I love Mozilla, but know that for most companies tossing any part of your audience is completely unreasonable. This seems even more true for an advocacy site. I did actually plead for a "usable" Mozillazine site on older browsers in the "XML, Buildbar Comments" discussion just prior to the latest change - see: http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=2120&message=29#29 I'm disappointed to say that the revamp (so far) has not provided what I requested - namely a site that is actually both readable and navigable in Netscape 4.X for example (it can look ugly as heck as far in older browsers as far as I'm concerned). Whilst the postings seem to be readable, the "Reply to this message" and links to replies to postings don't seem to work :-( It looks like mozillaZine has indeed repeated the mistakes of www.mozillaquestquest.com, www.mozillanews.org and galeon.sourceforge.net as I feared it would, but it is early days and one hopes that they can tweak the pages to make them usuable in older browsers. As the original poster (and I myself in my original post) said, mozillaZine is an advocacy site and hence must be usuable by as many browsers as is feasible, so that the advocacy message can be passed onto users who "haven't seen the Mozilla light yet". I still use Netscape 4.79 myself on some (slower) platforms because it starts much faster than Mozilla and uses about half the RAM of Mozilla. On faster platforms, Mozilla (or variants like Netscape 6.2.1 or galeon 1.0.2) is clearly the browser of choice, but not everyone has P4 machines you know... Indeed... This site now looks horrible in Internet Explorer 6.. The side bar is displayed at the bottom of every page, the tops of box borders and images are not shown until you select them and it is all uneven and horrible looking.. Weither or not you like Internet Explorer 5+6, or despite it not having full CSS2 (or whatever) support, it is still the most popular browser on the internet, and you should make an effort to get the page to look right in it.. Right now I'm just looking at the site and laughing at it, it's layout rendering is a total joke, nothing like a professional site such as this is.. At least you won't have as much as a bandwidth problem any more, I for one won't be visiting the site as much, and will only be using it for build comments until this is fixed... "It looks like mozillaZine has indeed repeated the mistakes of www.mozillaquestquest.com..." MozillaQuestQuest was *designed* to be only readable in Mozilla. So it was not a "mistake". The target audience of MQQ was the people who use Mozilla as their default browser and therefore understand the humour of a parody of MozillaQuest.com. MozillaQuestQuest was also a major test case for Mozilla's XHTML and CSS rendering. Several bugs were filed during the creation of that site. Actually, I'd argue that the target audience of MozillaQuestQuest.com wasn't Mozilla users, but actually MozillaZine [and MozillaQuest] readers - a sort of "in-joke" for people who laughed at Angelo's efforts. Since this encompassed more than just users of the Mozilla browser (at least before the latest revamp, which I bet has almost "killed off" visits by users of non-Gecko-based browsers), MozillaQuestQuest should have been designed to cope with more browsers than it does (after all, its target - MozillaQuest - ironically does !). Back then when mozillaquestquest.com started I can remember not a single post of someone complaining that it didn't work in his browser. All I read were posts like: "cool, try it in IE it shows you only a tree, Mozilla rocks" and a short discussion about why it was so (just because the page is done in pure XML). I didnt try this site using IE, but from the feedback here I suggest not to do this the MS way -- please make the site usable with as many browsers as possible and try at least to provide html that allows graceful degradation for older browsers. Show how to do it right. One of the things i hate most about the mozilla project is the sometimes religious way of only supporting standards, instead of being as pragmatic as possible. A browser project is not the place to convince or force people to use standards, however reasonable that would be. It is about giving people the most useful tool to browse the web. And site programming is not about convincing people to use a specific browser or technology, but about providing some information to the widest possible audience. unless everyone here is having a collective memory lapse, mozillazine was essentially exactly as a few people here want this new version to be - a site designed to work in as many browsers as possible. And it was bloated as hell, and ran up our bandwidth requirements through the roof. And it was essentially pointless since collectively NN4x and IE users take up (at most!) 10% of our viewing audience. I like Jason's idea of how to handle it (with a simple text version planned for non-standards-compliant browsers). I am really sick and tired of that percentage argument. Its exactly the argument web masters will give you when you complain about a site that only supports IE or doesnt conform to standards: "oh, but or stats show that we have only 5% non-IE users, its not worth the effort". I always tell these people that this is also about politeness and not pissing people off, because they are part of a minority. Mozilla-users are a minority and they will stay a minority for some time to come. They should know better ... So please, dont piss off IE and 4.x users even if they are just 10% of your visitors. As I mentioned, Jason has told me he plans to provide a simple alternative for these non-compliant browsers. This should allow them to read the site but allow mz to alleviate some of its bandwidth problems. You can be sick and tired of the percentage argument, but Jason has to pay the bills. A large reduction in page size will result in a large reduction in bandwidth requirements which will result in a greater possibility of mozillazine being able to 1) survive and 2) provide new features (like the new forums). From my understanding of the situation, the need to switch to CSS has essentially become an economic decision - not a political one. Mozillazine has (for the past two years) provided a very simple, clean site. And I imagine that Jason can, within the limits of the CSS of Netscape 4.x and IE, provide a simple, clean alternative for our 10% of our readers who still cling to the past. I've seen you're using display: table; and the like which are obviously not supported in IE. Couldn't the same effect be done using position:absolute? Then at least IE users would see most things right (the sidebar to name the most important) Apart from that: great job! This shows what can be done using standardized CSS without any propreitary features. http://www.bluerobot.com/web/layouts/ or http://glish.com/css/ Fits the bill nicely, and doesn't look like crap in ie. I'm very surprised that no one here knows how to do a decent css layout! stylo~ Funny - they had to hack the CSS to get it to look right in IE and Opera. not really. many layouts there and they use a box-model hack if you want things exactly the same in ie5, but just let the displayed box sizes vary for ie5 if you want. (Pre-5 browsers can eat times new roman, in my opinion.) those are the most respected css layout sources on the web, so if they're not good enough for you, you might as well forget about css layouts. stylo~ So I guess you agree with web masters then, who tell me that, well they do privide limited support for mozilla, but all the nice features will only be supported for IE users because, 1) mozilla doesnt have this wonderful capabilities like activeX etc. and 2) there are 95% IE users visiting their site anyway? What difference is there between their argument and your argument? Personally, I always had the impression that it is impolite for a supermarket to change its service depending on the brand of car a customer is driving, but I guess that is too much of a crypto-communist ( (C) Steve Ballmer) way of thinking ... The difference is that ActiveX is a proprietary technology that belongs to one company, while CSS is an open standard developed by the organization in charge of defining the way the web works. I'll readily admit to being a purist rather than a pragmatist, but to me, once this site's pages are all made correctly according to the official HTML specs, then the problem becomes that IE is a broken browser, and complaints should be directed to Microsoft to support the specs properly, and not to the site owner for writing correct code. Now, to take a more pragmatic tone, once the site has been brought up to W3C spec, if there are bandwidth and time efficient ways to make the site look better on IE6, they're probably worth looking into. Supposedly, it does support HTML4 and CSS1 pretty well, so there's probably a way to make it work on both. i am all for standards, but its kind of funny how people seem to think a standard is something like a holy grail. there have been, and always will be standards or parts of standards that were designed badly enough, or ignoring reality so that nobody adopts them. such a standard isnt worth the paper it is written on. the thing is that a website is made for its visitors, not the W3 consortium. i have always nagged people to use standards and my home page validates for strict xhtml. but to just lean back and say: complain to microsoft is a bit too easy and it is the wrong way to go. pissing off IE users is the wrong way, even if one dislikes IE and/or microsoft as much as i do. No offense, this is a great site, and I know that you have to pay the bills, but creating a small yet working layout that works in all browsers is easy, many sites I visit are small and look good in Mozilla/Netscape 6/IE, and I have made several sites that look professional in all of these browsers... Right now this site looks like shit, its basically text only, very little fonts and no layout, images have borders around them, and it's not even worth my time visiting... It's gotten worse since yesterday.. I assume you consider youself a professional site, and making a text only layout or a layout which does not look and work as good as it used to for Internet Explorer is just rediculous, and will certinally help your bandwidth requirements, as I'm sure I won't continue visiting a site which does not even look remotely like anything... Seems like you're visiting pages only for their layout? Hm....I think there was something....wait.....ah, content! I ever thought the most important thing on a website is it's content. But maybe that was wrong. Give them some time. They work on a non-standards-compilant-browser version so it won't look ugly anymore. And the content will even be more visible (less layout). You seem to be equating "bloated as hell" with "working in as many browsers as possible". I agree that Mozillazine was bloated, but always found it unnecessary. I don't believe you have to use completely new techniques to trim the bloat. Yahoo and google have been doing it for years with basic and portable HTML. Before the table layout/invisible gif trick, HTML was quite simple. It's nice that moving to CSS layout has similar benefits, but careful consideration can make this more compatible with older browsers, which still being cool in Mozilla. That said, Netscape 4 now looks much nicer than when I first posted. I'm getting reasonable headers and simple layout. And it seems to load fairly quickly too (perhaps a benefit of getting rid of the tables?) so I wouldn't worry too much. If the simple text only version is going to be fully functional, that would be fine, but if it is going to be otherwise degraded from what's available with the full site, I'd suggest that's a bad choice. It's still be very nice to add the wrap attribute for N4 so that posting in talkback doesn't scroll to the right forever. 10% is all you get for non-Mozilla users? I am completely and utterly shocked. What kind of stats do you have on Operating System platform? Mostly windows like other sites? ..it would be nice if there was some indication whether each forum has new messages or not. That would be similar to the topic lists now. And another thing: when using Konqueror, the front page is either all screwed up, or it's fine except for the build bar being at the bottom of the page... (I thought Konqueror had a decent CSS support, but I really don't know if this is the page's or the browser's fault...) The easiest way to get this site in place quickly is to run it through the validator at http://validator.w3c.org One recommendation I\'d have is to start by writing the pages to the /transitional/ DTD, and using the following DOCTYPE: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN\"> Converting to this DOCTYPE will be a lot easier than going straight to strict (trust me, I know). Run the pages through the validator with this DOCTYPE until all the errors are gone. One of the most common ones I see when I do it is unescaped ampersands...you need to replace all instances of literal ampersands on the page (including those in bugzilla queries) with the ampersand HTML entity. Once everything validates properly using the transitional DTD, then switch to the strict one, and go through another debugging cycle with the validator. Or leave it...I\'d actually be happy just to have the site just using valid transitional HTML for a while, and it\'d probably make it easier to accomodate other, less standard-compliant browsers, too. I always thought it would be nice to turn the "mozillazine" logo at the top of the sidebar into a link to the home page. Ditto that with the big logo. It can never hurt to add navigational tools. "It can never hurt..." Well, I guess I should amend that. It CAN hurt to add navigational tools, but in this case I think it wouldn't hurt, since nothing's visually changing. James I thought the problem was that the old site used up too much bandwidth.. So redesign it to use less, by using CSS instead of FONT tags, for example. And what do I see? Stuff like <span class="bold"> instead of <b>. Why not use a tag like <em> and the override the style with CSS if that's what you want. If you even CALL your class "bold" then why not just use <b> instead? You could always override that too if you need to. Not to mention CSS class names like talkbackResponseAuthor or talkbackResponseReplies which are repeated over and over again on pages with many replies. Seems to me like you are completely screwing up the chance to save space! The idea to use CSS instead of old HTML trickery is very good, however.. But you guys are not doing as good a job at saving space as you could. talkbackResponseAuthor could very well just be tbResAuth. Same for all the other rule names. But that's not the worst part! The worst part is that by using "advanced" layout techniques, you are completely breaking the site for most web browsers. Yes, this is a Mozilla advocacy site, but even as such, it doesn't mean that people can always access the site with Mozilla. I still use IE 6 as my primary browser, both at work and at home because it works the best on most sites, and it doesn't crash when I re-organize by bookmarks or do something else that is just as trivial. So even though lots of people are interested in Mozilla that read this site (obviously), it doesn't mean that they would all be USING Mozilla. It's completely possible to make a site that gets the space savings and efficiency of CSS but without completely messing up the page layout on older browsers. I'm sorry to say, but you guys have done a *REALLY* piss-poor job in the conversion effort. And before someone starts yelling to me to shut up and play nice and all that, I can tell you right now that I know for a fact that I could make a nicely degradaing version of this site that would NOT use FONT tags etc. I'm confident that so could the adminds of this site. Why they chose not to is beyond me. Surely they must have seen how this looks in IE6 right now! It ain't pretty! You can't even read the comments without selecting the text (cause it's white on white). You'll be taking care of the bandwidth problem this way alright, cause you'll lose all IE / Netscape 4 / Konqueror / etc. users. Maybe that's what you want.. to have all the comments be pro-Mozilla? Well congratulations.. Jason has told me that he is working to provide solutions for people with non-standards-compliant browsers. Thanks for your insights. I never thought this day would come, but I\\\\\\\'ve surpassed simply acknowledging a quality grievance from macpeep. I completely and wholeheartedly agree with him on this issue. I\\\\\\\'m ALL FOR making sites look awesome in Mozilla. But how many times have I ragged on web developers for only caring how their site looks in IE and never giving Moz/NS4 a glance? I\\\\\\\'ve read the post describing how this design is a work in progess... so then what on earth is it doing on a live site? Surely there is a dev mozillazine site somewhere?!? Q could not be God. The universe is not so badly designed. I have come to question Mozillazine on similar reasoning. Crash course in what not to do if ever I saw it. Neck and neck with phpNuke. I agree with most of this. I personally think a useful compromise is to create a simple table to shape the page and then use CSS for everything else. <table width="100%"> <tr> <td colspan="2">banner</td> </tr> <tr> <td>content</td> <td width="140">Sidebar</td> </tr> </table> guarantees your page will look acceptable in just about every browser that matters. you could even drop the top row and use a DIV if you like, but in terms of bandwidth I would estimate this method will be more economic. you can style the table in CSS if you like obviously, although I have gone for a bare bones table that does the job. Also, this makes the site easier to maintain than having an "advanced" version and then a cruddy version for everyone else. Plus, if you are going to serve content customised for different browsers, you are going to inccur the bandwidth overhead of a redirect for each request, thus undermining your drive for efficient file size. This is a reasonable and easy to reverse engineer accomodation. I offer my own site www.nomad-jedi.com, as an example. It looks fine in Opera 5, Galeon, *Mozilla, IE5+, konqueror. In IE4 and NS4 it looks a bit ugly but is legible and maintains a similar layout. However, it has donkey loads of advanced CSS, no font tags whatsoever and most importantly, works best if not better in Mozilla. Just my opinion of course :) BTW - MacPeep - you got your PPC2002 upgrade disk yet? I got mine on saturday only to discover its got a big crack in it. Grrrrr... any chance of a download? :) That shoulda been <table width=\"100%\"> <tr> <td colspan=\"2\">banner</td> </tr> <tr> <td>content</td> <td width=\"140\">Sidebar</td> </tr> </table> That shoulda been <table width="100%"> <tr> <td colspan="2">banner</td> </tr> <tr> <td>content</td> <td width="140">Sidebar</td> </tr> </table> "BTW - MacPeep - you got your PPC2002 upgrade disk yet? I got mine on saturday only to discover its got a big crack in it. Grrrrr... any chance of a download? :)" Yup! Got it, and it works great and doesn't eat up any of the RAM - just the ROM flash! Well, the media player goes in RAM, but then again, it used to be in RAM for me anyway since I had upgraded. You should definitely get a new one if there's a crack in it. I doubt it takes long or anything, since the delay was caused by them not having the software done yet. Hey, anything to shut you up has to be a good thing. For the rest of you, I am working on getting it looking better in IE/4.x, but I am only one person, so it just takes a while. jason "Hey, anything to shut you up has to be a good thing." Having some issues dealing with criticism? What else did you expect from the 10% (stats by mozAdmin) of NS4 / IE users? I mean, surely you must have tried the site with IE, right? It was unusable. Not just ugly. It was *unusable*. Text wouldn't shop up without selecting (highlighting) it. If you disagreed with my comments in the previous post, why don't you answer it? I'm eagerly waiting for your rationale for why replacing <b> with <span class="bold"> is a good idea (seeing as you could have defined a CSS rule for b), and all the other stuff.. Here's a novel idea, you give me a break for once, while I work on my own to get everything working. You're incorrect in thinking I didn't try it in IE, as I did. You are correct in thinking I didn't care how it looked. I want to get it right in Mozilla first, others later. This is my first time doing a site that's not built for 4.x, so I'm a bit unsure of how to do things. I realize now that the span class=bold was wrong, and have been working on replacing them with 'strong'. I'll look at making the class names shorter, that's a fine idea. Your "I can do all this much better than you" tone I can do without. Grow up, learn how to be civil when you post, and maybe people won't think you're such a dick all the time. jason As another lone-gunman free-time-only site maintainer who yearns for standards compliance, I know exactly how you feel and appreciate the work you're putting in. I think people should calm down a little and be less adversarial. Most of the suggestions have been good, but the delivery stinks. Of course a "statement of intent" update to this article (regarding legacy browser support) may help.... First of all, I apologize for my tone.. In particular, I realize "piss poor" was a piss poor choice of words. However, when I said (paraphrased) that "I know I could do it better", I also said "..and I'm sure so can the admins of this site. Why they chose not to is beyond me." I was not suggesting lack of WILL not lack of SKILL. Second, it's one thing to be doing it on your own / free time and it being the first time for a non 4.x site and all that, but it's another to put it online. Usually, you have two sites - one that is online that people use, and another that you use for development until it's ready, tested and confirmed to work 100% with all browsers. Only THEN do you switch. Putting online a version of the site that was unreadable and unusable for a large percentage of users is bad judgement at best. Considering the comments by mozAdmin regarding how ignoring the 10% of IE users was simply a design choice, I had all reason to believe that there was no intention to do anything to the site, had there not been a "violent" wave of negative feedback. As far as "growing up" and "being civil", I accept (at least to some extent) the criticism and would again like to apologize for the strong words.. I'm often criticized of being pedantic by friends and coworkers so it would be naive for me to think I don't do the same when I post here. :) However, I still think I'm right most of the time when I post. ;) I check my financial statements just to make sure and, yes, you have *not* charged me a cent for use of MozillaZine. You don't owe me or anyone else a thing with regards to its look, function, content, or whatever. It's ridiculous of me to offer or deny you permission to do whatever the h.e.doublehockeysticks you want to do with this site regardless of its impact on me - it's your site and your right to do what you want! That said, I'd like to express my heart felt appreciation for the time and effort you have spent on creating a resource that I find both invaluable and enjoyable. Thanks Jason et all for *allowing* us to share the fruits of your labour. "It's ridiculous of me to offer or deny you permission to do " Nobody has offered or denied permission to do anything. There's been criticism for how the transition to a CSS based site has been peformed. Those criticisms are very valid. If you disagree with them, why don't you post a response? This has nothing to do with if we pay for MozillaZine or not, nor does it have to do with if Jason does this for work or on his free time. The same principles about site design and development still apply (such as not putting a site online that doesn't work on the web browser that has 80% market share). please don't tell something about 80% marketshare. It's just not true for this site. What's true is that normally you don't put an unfinished site online, but on the other hand it's the fastest way to gather feedback and thus the end result will get better. (kids don't try this for any commercial site though). "This has nothing to do with if we pay for MozillaZine or not, nor does it have to do with if Jason does this for work or on his free time. The same principles about site design and development still apply" I disagree. I hold private ventures and commercial ventures to difference standards. You may not and that is your choice. You should not style the textboxes the way you do. They don't look like textboxes anymore, and may thus not be recognized. 1. You have some code like <div class="FOO"><a href="...">...</a></div> which can be replaced with <a class="FOO" href="...">...</a> and giving the class "FOO" display:block. 2. You can replace your spacers with borders and divs. This will reduce the number of HTTP GETS for images that you will receive and should improve bandwidth and performance. 3. You can move all your image "width", "height", etc. to the CSS from the HTML. 4. You can reduce the number of boxes Mozilla will use to lay out your page by using writing stories like this: <p>Paragrah 1</p><p>Paragraph 2</p> instead of <p>Paragraph 1<br><br>Paragraph 2</p>. This way s also more "in the spirit of HTML". 4. Similarly, instead of <p>Paragraph 1<br><br><span class="bold>UPDATE!</span>Paragraph 2</p>, you could write <p>Paragraph 1</p><p class="update">Paragraph 2</p> with this css: .update:before { content: "UPDATE!"; font-weight: bold; } - Brian If I am correct, it appears that either the mostly text Mozillazine has just gone in, or IE5 and Opera are seriously confused :) I would suggest trying to reach a middle ground, by making the site mostly presentable to other browser users. It can be ugly but it doesn't have to be horrible. In both IE5 and Opera right now there is no background, no tables, and the sidebar is on the bottom. In other words, freakishly weird :) This will most likely drive away readers using other browsers for whatever reason. At the very least, post a detailed explanation that clearly shows why Mozillazine has implemented this method and why the pages wouldn't work in other browsers. People not in the know would be very scared of this site if they visited and saw it the way it is :) I'd suggest making this site HTML 4.0 Strict compliant (as is 'announced' in the currect DOCTYPE)... The w3 validator (http://validator.w3.org) barfs on this page and the main site as it is now. Could you post some of the warnings here and suggest fixes? We're supposed to be an open source community after all! :) I don't see how posting warnings could be useful, as the validator is open for all to use (just copy-paste the link and see for yourself!), and moreso, the HTML here is prone to changes. It's located at validator.w3.org. Open source does not mean that webdesigners shouldn\'t be paying attention to correct HTML... Conceded, it might be something to postpone for a while whilst designing, however, I think that published HTML should be error-free. Fixed! I'm still seeing the validator report one error relating to the align attribute of a seperator image (in strict HTML, img tags can't have align attributes...you have to do it through CSS). Also, (and this is a total nitpick), for strict HTML4, the DOCTYPE should be exactly: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"> (Ignore the backslashes that the forum will insert in that). The initial 'html' should be lower case (to match the html tag), and the latest version is 4.01. Unless you want to make the jump to XHTML, of course. :-) Does anyone know of any major sites that are actually done in valid XHTML? Shouldn't, to be completely exact, the URL to the DTD also be included in the Doctype? You're right...although I don't believe it's a requirement for compliance, it is definitely a good idea. <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> You could update the Screenshots page to show the Site Navigation Toolbar and Tabbed Browsing features. Although the HTML specification recommends the use of stylesheets rather than presentational elements, it's also suggested that whole pages shouldn't just be <div>s but markup appropriate to the use. e.g. lists for lists (lists of links?), etc. I don't understand what the point is to having this site look bad in all of the other browsers when fundamentally it still looks the same. I could *kinda* understand if there was a bunch of new whiz-bang features that conformed to standards yet no other browser could do. A "See what the latest standard web technologies can do that other lacking browsers can't" kinda promotion. Even then, though, I would be a bit skeptical given the current usability stage that Mozilla is in right now compared to IE, Opera, NS 4, etc... As it stands now, the site basically looks the same yet now no longer renders properly in browsers used by 99% of the public. As far as saving 'bandwidth'... just what kind of ISP does Mozalline have? I've never come across such an extreme rationale to web design before. There are many thousands of sites that are far more heavily trafficked than here that pump far more data, images and all. The arguments supporting the current change in no way help the Mozilla effort. Hard line fanaticism, that is blind to fact, does not work as an effective means to promote Mozilla..... but rather, is a complete hinderance. I hope things will change here because until Mozilla truly becomes a stable and reliable product that I can count on (Moz 1.0?), I will continue to use IE as my primary browser. >As far as saving 'bandwidth'... just what kind of ISP does Mozalline have? I've never come across such an extreme rationale to web design before. There are many thousands of sites that are >far more heavily trafficked than here that pump far more data, images and all. Maybe they get money for that so they can pay their ISP? And if you're interested in. I try too to keep my sites small so they take less transfer and display faster. Especially users with transfer limits (like me) appreciate that. >The arguments supporting the current change in no way help the Mozilla effort. Hard line fanaticism, that is blind to fact, does not work as an effective means to promote Mozilla..... but >rather, is a complete hinderance. Well you don't have to pay MozillaZine's bill. Well and first read, then write. They are working on the problems. There were 50 postings like your's before so your's gives no new hint in any way. >I hope things will change here because until Mozilla truly becomes a stable and reliable product that I can count on (Moz 1.0?), I will continue to use IE as my primary browser. you are free to use whatever browser you like. But if you want a good Mozilla just help. "There were 50 postings like your's before so your's gives no new hint in any way." None of the from me. I have just as much right to voice what I think, too. But you are correct, I only caroused about half way down the list of the 100 or so messages before I replied. That is about where the real complaints started. It's nice to see that I'm not the only one on this side of the fence. "Maybe they get money for that so they can pay their ISP?" "Well you don't have to pay MozillaZine's bill." Jesus, don't scare me. What a frightening amount that must be. Who do you think you guys are kidding with all of this 'ivory tower' expense nonsense? It doesn't cost much to run a site like this. Have you checked ISP prices lateley? You guys make it sound like it is a $10,000 per month expense. Come on! As far as traffic, how long as this place been around? 4 years tops? In that time there have been almost 900 articles posted, throw out the top and lowest 20 replied to articles, and you have a whopping average of 19 posts per article. Yeah, were talking insurmountable traffic here. I know, I know: for every post there are 10,000,000 viewers. "you are free to use whatever browser you like." Not really, IE is about the only realistically viable option I have at the moment.
IE6 is the closest thing to standards support IE for Windows has. What I would suggest is that the site be limited to the CSS and DOM support that IE 6 has. Opera's DOM support is so poor, I don't think the site should be limited to that. I also don't think we should hold ourself to supporting earlier versions of IE. If the users won't upgrade, screw um:) Also, based on some comments here, I think one key way to ensure the site is coded properly is to be WCAG (http://www.w3.org/WAI/) compliant at the highest level supportable given the state of todays web editors. Bobby (http://www.cast.org/bobby/) should help with WCAG. I don't know where the comments about Mozilla's usability not being up-to-par is about. As far as I am concerned Mozilla's usability surpassed Netscape 4.x at .94. > I dont know where the comments about Mozillas usability not being up-to-par is about. Well, one of those places those comments came from is me, and Ill tell ya what its about right now if you will take a moment to remove your sun glasses. > As far as I am concerned Mozillas usability surpassed Netscape 4.x at .94. That is not necessarily correct. Whilst Mozilla can properly render a variety of web documents written for todays latest standards, a large number of sites are still optimized for IE and NS4 via browser detection that in many cases causes problems for Mozilla. That problem, in and of itself, however, will go away in time but there is another element that is being ignored here that goes beyond that of simply rendering a web page..... and that is the stability, reliability and performance of the product in question. Mozilla still suffers greatly here. The product is not complete and is still prone to severe regressions not limited to broken/quirky features, stability issues, performance issues, memory leaks, and even data loss. Not to mention the hardware requirements Mozilla demands relative to other browsers. I wont start to delve in what a lousy choice Mozilla is right now for the most common of users: The average Joe/Jane whom hardly know zilch about computers yet just want to get around the web. The kind of folks that view the PC as a tool and nothing more. You know... the kinds of folks that dont hyperventilate over an icon or the appropriateness of an HTML tag. So, in some ways saying that Moz .94 started to surpass NS4 in usability is just riff-ruff on the surface. On the same token, NS4 is a dead stick compared to IE5+ usage. As far as Opera goes, it is weak in the DOM department but it can currently handle far more sites than NS4 can and probably even more than Mozilla can: Better DHTML than Mozilla? No. Better overall page rendering with what is out there right now? I wouldnt be surprised. >I wont start to delve in what a lousy choice Mozilla is right now for the most common of users: The average Joe/Jane whom hardly know zilch about computers yet just want to get around the web. You aren't one of those common users and I doubt you are a usability expert with any "most common of users" usability data on Mozilla or Mozilla derivatives like Netscape 6.x. In the absense of usability study data and in the absense of public comments from the "most common of users" (who tend not to comment very much in public) I go with the next best thing; the users who are just web smart enough to actually download and install software but still do it through C|net. They contradict your claim. http://download.cnet.com/downloads/0-3364665-100-8105033.html?tag=st.dl.3364665.unav.0 --Asa
#132 Re: Re: Re: Re: I actually pointed this out before theby todd2002 Monday January 14th, 2002 8:44 PM > You aren't one of those common users Everybody that isn't now used to be at one time or another. So I beg to differ. > I doubt you are a usability expert What exactly is a usability expert? Is this some certificate offered at community colleges these days? In any event, a BA in Usability Expertise isn't required here, just a tad of common sense, some basic honesty, and good old fashioned real world experience. Although, there is a great way for you, or anyone else, to get a real good idea about browser usage and preferences. Just ask people. It can't be any easier than that. Go to 50 heavily trafficked non-browser related forums and just ask: and therein lies the answer. No 'suspicious' web server stats required. > In the absense of usability study data On the contrary, there exists hordes of 'usability data'. Preach your sermon to me when Moz hits 50% usage..... or no..... 40%..... or wait..... 30%..... or better yet, 20%..... ah, what the hell..... when Moz hits 15%. Until then, try selling that Florida swamp land to someone else. > and in the absense of public comments from the "most common of users" I wholeheartedly agree with that. You won't see any comments from the "most common of users" until they actually start using the browser and have something to comment about.
My point is that you are no better judge of usability from a joe blow normal everyday end user than I am. The C|net users seem overall more satisfied with Netscape6.2 than they are with IE. It's a smaller sample (only about 2200 users commented/voted) but I trust they are closer to normal everyday users than either of us and they match up pretty well with your users of "heavily trafficked non-browser related forums". >Preach your sermon to me when Moz hits 50% usage..... or no..... 40%..... or wait..... 30%..... or better yet, 20%..... ah, what the hell..... when Moz hits 15%. Until then, try selling that Florida swamp land to someone else. Either you're playing dumb or you're not playing. It's pretty obvious to most people thata have been paying attention for the last few years that usability has little or nothing to do with marketshare. When some Mozilla-based browser hits 15%, 30%, 60%, whatever, it won't have much to do with usability. I'm willing to bet just about anything that even if Mozilla was twice as usable as IE, without some major bundling deal it will never enjoy substantial market share. Without a distribution mechanism to counter the oposition's bundling with the OS there really isn't any hope of major gains in marketshare. There simply aren't enough people that download and install web browsers. The overwhelming majority of users take what they're handed with their new PC purchase and if it's simply 'good enough' they won't even investigate an alternative. --Asa #141 Re: Re: Re: Re: I actually pointed this out before theby todd2002 Tuesday January 15th, 2002 6:55 AM > My point is that you are no better judge of usability from a joe blow > normal everyday end user than I am. Given your arguments here, I'm not so sure of that. You are a Mozilla advocate, I am not. Nor am I an IE/Opera/Whatever advocate. If I understand correctly, you are also involved with the Mozilla effort. As a result, your perceptions can be a bit clouded. I don't suffer from this misnomer since, when it comes to web browsers, I am just a user. > The C|net users seem overall more satisfied with Netscape6.2 The CNet users? Is that the basis for your argument? Those CNET 'opinion' polls (as well as CNETs reviews) relate to reality like Osama Bin Ladens mood relates to the weather in Arizona. I suggest that you, or anyone here for that matter, take your polls to any of the many thousands of non-browser related forums. Don't ask browser usage/preferences questions in a Mozilla newsgroup, or an 'I love IE' forum. Take it to the masses, in places completely void of 'web browser advocates'. It doesn't require much hindsight to figure this out. > Either you're playing dumb or you're not playing. It's pretty obvious to > most people thata have been paying attention for the last few years that > usability has little or nothing to do with marketshare. I see now. So this is what its being twisted in to: Usage visa vis Usability. The usage facts are there, whether or not there is personal confirmation or approval from you, so I guess I will venture into repeating myself in regards to usability: Mozilla is an unfinished product right now that is plagued with usability problems, many of which I have already stated. The fact that there are more 'options' available to the user that allow Mozilla to be more flexible, i.e., Privacy and Security, Javascript, Theming, etc..., etc... None of that means diddly squat right now in terms of usability until the product is complete. You can offer all of the latest whiz bang features and roll them into one product but until those features are contained within a solid framework that conforms to acceptible levels of performance, stability, and reliability..... the 'potential usability' means nothing and in no way equates to 'current usability'. Broken/quirky/incomplete features, stability issues, performance issues, memory leaks, data loss, random lockups, ad infinitum..... these are not the attributes of a software product that is strong in usability. When potential usability becomes true usability then the usage will follow.... along with word of mouth and along with increasing market share, irregardless of whether IE is included with Windows. Don't even start with the "Mozilla will never amount to much market share wise because IE is included with Windows". That is a pure cop out, nothing could be further from the truth, and you're barking up the wrong tree with that argument. In that case, you are shooting your own self in the foot with your own argument by saying that a user, despite the marvelous positive feedback and recommendations regarding software product X, that they are incapable of cruising over to CNet to download and install software product X because a competing software product Y is already included with Windows.
Asa, be sure not to shoot that barking cop in the foot! "...you are shooting your own self in the foot with your own argument by saying that a user, despite the marvelous positive feedback and recommendations regarding software product X, that they are incapable of cruising over to CNet to download and install software product X because a competing software product Y is already included with Windows." This is an *established fact* even in law which tends to be very conservative. It is this *fact* that lead to Microsoft’s lost of its anti-trust case. It is this *fact* that lead the courts have denied Microsoft proposed settlement. People *will* use what they are given despite better alternative. Most people hold this fact to be true. Your arguments to the contrary are insufficient to convince me otherwise. That those with influence in the Mozilla community recognise this fact only bodes well that appropriate steps will be taken to address it. "This is an *established fact* even in law which tends to be very conservative" It is far from fact. Bundling can and will affect initial usage but not necessarily eventual usage. IE bundling did nothing to affect my own usage of NS4 until IE5 came about. Windows Media player to this day doesn't keep me from using WinAmp, etc.., etc... My point *entirely* was that will IE's bundling in Windows keep Mozilla forever bogged down in the less than 2% range? The answer is hell no. If Mozilla reaches an acceptable level of stability, reliability, etc... it can gain in market share considerably... irregardless of IE being included in Windows. When Mozilla actually becomes a truly accepted browser: Advertising, word of mouth, bundling deals, and the sheer marketing muscle of AOL will get it to the desktop... and it will stay on the users desktop so long as it is a true contender to IE. And I don't mean simply the ability of the gecko engine to succesfully render a web page. I'm talking the whole ball of wax here... stability, reliability, performance, unbroken features, etc..., etc... No one disagrees with the sentiment of your second paragraph, however the arguments in the first need much to be desired. Your personal experience is insufficient evidence (for me but maybe not for you) to conclude a fact. Both Microsoft and the US DOJ gathered a much larger body of evidence. Under scrutiny by the courts, it was determine that this evidence so substantially supported the interpretation – "People *will* use what they are given despite better alternatives" – that it can and now does carry the weight of the law. This is a profound finding of fact that even the financial muscle of the likes of Microsoft will be hard pressed to overturn. Your arguments remain grossly insufficient to convince me otherwise. "Your personal experience is insufficient evidence" It is not just personal experience based on my own usage... it is sheer fact. When IE 3.0 was bundled with Windows 95 OSR2 from 11/96 all the way until the release of Windows 98 in the summer of 1998... it hardly made a dent in market share compared to NS usage. Then Windows98 came about with IE4. Sure, some just used it because it was there... many used it because they liked it better... many still, though, continued using Netscape Communicator. From here on out IE kept improving whilst NS4 went nowhere other than a very mild upgrade to the 4.5+ series. It was eventually IE5 that nailed the coffin into Netscape4 since NS4 was going absolutely nowhere. That *negative* reality is due to the fact that NS was once a browser that cost money... and M$ giving theirs away killed that revenue stream... thereby crippling NS's ability to continue working as a free enterprise and continue its browser development. It wasn't the bundled browser, in and of itself, that directly killed NS usage... it was a free browser that kept getting better and better whilst the NS4 was going no where. Now, lets say that we get the current Mozilla and magically fix any and all known 30,000+ bugs in it (or whatever the number is). Are you telling me that when it becomes a truly competitive alternative that it will stay bogged down in the low market share that it has now because IE is bundled with Windows? Irregardless of the marketing might of AOL, positive reviews, bundling deals, word of mouth, etc...??? I don't think so.
> many still, though, continued using Netscape Communicator. They _continued_ that means they had it installed before. But who cares to install another browser if they have already one that works? Regardless of how good the others are they won't get a chance from the majority of users cause they simply don't care. "They _continued_ that means they had it installed before." Win98 upgrades installed over Win95 systems? Quite possible. Clean Win98 installs and new machines? Notta. I'm curious, how has the bundling of IE affected your usage? Or anyone elses here for that matter? Despite the inclusion of IE in Windows, you seem rather content using an unfinished web browser with tens of thousands of outstanding bugs.
> I'm curious, how has the bundling of IE affected your usage? Or anyone elses here for that matter? Despite the inclusion of IE in Windows, you seem rather content using an unfinished web browser with tens of thousands of outstanding bugs. Yes you're right here, I continued using NS4 and then Mozilla since M13. That's simply for one reason: I don't trust IE. I don't want my system be open for every 10 year old who can use a virus construction kit. But I know pretty many people who just used IE after reinstalling their OS. And don't forget one thing: In pre IE times the world wide web was still something relatively new and not every kid out there used it, so you can say that users back then were more technically educated. Now even my sister who doesn't use how to plug three cables to her PC browses the web using the browser that is installed. And that is IE. And just for the matter: you are using a browser with ten thousands of outstanding bugs too, you just cannot look at them or get lists. But that does not in any way mean that they ain't there. Plus, a question. What is a finished product? Something that hits a version called "1.0"? When Mozilla gets there it just means that most APIs freeze, so third parties can rely on that. Development will continue just like before and for me it will probably become just another Milestone. "Windows 95 OSR2 from 11/96 all the way until the release of Windows 98 in the summer of 1998... it hardly made a dent in market share compared to NS usage." No one is arguing that a poor product will gain market share. The argument is that a better produce, in and of itself, might not be enough to displace a more established (read: bundled), though inferior product! History is littered with the dead carcasses of "better produced." It is hard to argue against this presumption. "Then Windows98 came about with IE4. Sure, some just used it because it was there... many used it because they liked it better... many still, though, continued using Netscape Communicator." People will use what they are given despite better alternatives. Thus if your first experience was with Netscape, you tended to continue to download it. If, however, your first experience was with (the bundled) IE, you tended to continue to use it. This period of decline for Netscape only documented the growing number of first-time internet users whose first experience was with (the bundled) IE. "It was eventually IE5 that nailed the coffin into Netscape4 since NS4 was going absolutely nowhere. That *negative* reality is due to the fact that NS was once a browser that cost money... and M$ giving theirs away killed that revenue stream... thereby crippling NS's ability to continue working as a free enterprise and continue its browser development. It wasn't the bundled browser, in and of itself, that directly killed NS usage... it was a free browser that kept getting better and better whilst the NS4 was going no where." The only disagreement here is to what extent the bundling of the browser played in the decline of Netscape's market share. I (and the US judicial system) believe that its role was substancial enough to be considered an abuse of Microsoft's monopoly position in the OS market. If you care to argue against these court finding, I interesting in listening. "Now, lets say that we get the current Mozilla and magically fix any and all known 30,000+ bugs in it (or whatever the number is). Are you telling me that when it becomes a truly competitive alternative that it will stay bogged down in the low market share that it has now because IE is bundled with Windows? Irregardless of the marketing might of AOL, positive reviews, bundling deals, word of mouth, etc...??? I don't think so." Not quite! Only the "marketing might of AOL" to ensure Mozilla and its derivatives are *bundled* on enough systems will counteract the effects of Windows/IE bundling. If I had to bet on a race between a free-stable-competitive browser and a free-stable-competitive-*established* browser, I'd bet on the latter! Mozilla now stands in the shoes of IE3.0 filled in 11/96. Mozilla will have to do everything that IE did, including being bundled, if it wants to gain market share. "No one is arguing that a poor product will gain market share." That is exactly my point, per the original statements, as to why Mozilla has hardly any market share. Despite whatever claims that all is well on the Mozilla front... there is still *much* to be tended to before that browser is taken seriously by the masses. In the final analysis, there are a variety of reasons why Mozilla *may* never gain much in market share: Maybe because of sheer design, Mozilla will never be widely accepted. Maybe all of the issues it faces now never will be resolved. Maybe IE will improve all the more. Whatever the reason, *if* that happens, who knows? I do know that if it doesn't gain any significant market share that it isn't, in and of itself, because of a web browser already being included with Windows... unless there is nothing compelling/unique about it to give anyone a reason to switch. If it is good and accepted then it will gain... if not, then it won't. Pure and simple. Time will tell... Mozilla still has quite a ways to go yet before it even beats current NS4 usage.
Your first two paragraphs require no response since you are just stating the obvious. I just hope that you don't believe they hold arguments to support your third. It's here in your third paragraph that the disagreement lies. Beta verses VHS. Hydrogen fuel cell verses gasoline. These and other examples exist that strongly suggest that a better mousetrap is often not enough especially when competing against an established incumbent. I've stated my arguments. I am done and do not care to continue. Your arguments still remain insufficient to convince me to alter my point of view. Carry on if you wish. "...you are just stating the obvious" I'm well aware of that, however, for the one I was initially responding to... such facts weren't so obvious. "Beta verses VHS. Hydrogen fuel cell verses gasoline. These and other examples..." Here are some more concrete examples... NS 3 vs. IE3, NS 4 vs IE3, NS4 vs IE4, WMP vs WinAMP... ad infinitum. "I've stated my arguments. I am done and do not care to continue. Your arguments still remain insufficient to convince me to alter my point of view." I've heard your arguments, as well... and subsequently, your views don't sway me in the least, either. I suppose that there will always be those who will blame IE for any shortcomings that Mozilla may bear.
Bruce, you\'re leaving off the part where Microsoft illegally leveraged it\'s monopoly in the operating system to lean on _distributors_ of PCs to remove or burry the alternative and give top placement to IE on the desktop. People will stick with something they\'ve been given if it\'s simply good enough. When IE was good enough for most people most of the time and they didn\'t have an alternative available _on_ _the_ _system_ _they_ _just_ _purchased_ then Netscape\'s share started to diminish.(see, computers used to ship with Netscape, most people who used Netscape got it on their new PC but when MS started threatening PC vendors who shipped Netscape it had a major impact). Without some serious bundling deal or other distribution mechanism _no_ browser, no matter how good it is, will take significant market share from IE. There simply are not that many people that will download a replacement for an application they already have. Just watch as winzip, one of the most popular downloads of all time, goes away over the next coupld of years since Microsoft started providing an \'integrated\' zip utility with windowsXP (if winXP enjoys the same adoption rates as 98). And I take issue with your calling this a cop-out. It\'s not. It is, however, a darned good reason to be putting effort into making Mozilla and Gecko more appealing to companies that have distribution mechanisms or if you\'ve got any friends at Dell, IBM, HP, or Compaq let me know. --Asa Asa, some things here are getting severly twisted around as to the point I was making. To clear a few things up: Am I saying that IE's inclusion in Windows doesn't affect IE's market share? Absolutely not. That point is that if Mozilla never *gains* significant market share, especially compared to where it is now, *despite* AOL muscle, advertising, bundling deals, word of mouth, etc... that it is *NOT* because of IE being included with Windows... it is because Mozilla simply wasn't accepted by the masses. Period. The end. If, three or four years from now, Mozilla never gains any significant ground in market share then you, or anyone else, can blame IE's inclusion into Windows all you want but the reality will be that the ultimate blame lies within that of Mozilla. To think anything else is a sheer cop out. I've noticed also that a few people here severely underestimate a users ability to make decisions for themselves... as if a user needs to be a software developer or web master in order to make intelligent rational choices. Nothing could be *further* from the truth. I could site countless examples of 'know nothing' users who somehow, by an act of God, conjured up the ability to choose and use software that wasn't 'in line' with what Windows dished them. Are any of these folks even close to being software developers, web developers, or even a computer geeks? Hell no... not even *remotely*. The only thing they are guilty of being is rational and intelligent adults. Don't blame IE if Mozilla stays bogged down in a 1% (or whatever) market share.
And please... don't misconstrue the term 'bundling' that I included as meaning: "The only way Mozilla can gain significant market share is if it is included in Windows, in lieu of IE, via new computer purchases" That fate lies completely in the final product, Mozilla... "I've noticed also that a few people here severely underestimate a users ability to make decisions for themselves... as if a user needs to be a software developer or web master in order to make intelligent rational choices. Nothing could be *further* from the truth. "I could site countless examples of 'know nothing' users who somehow, by an act of God, conjured up the ability to choose and use software that wasn't 'in line' with what Windows dished them. Are any of these folks even close to being software developers, web developers, or even a computer geeks? Hell no... not even *remotely*. The only thing they are guilty of being is rational and intelligent adults." I have worked as a computer trainer and now serve as the resident computer guru in my current workplace. If personal experience can be considered evidence then the truth is that the majority of people don't have a clue as to what they are doing. Watching and learning how the average person deals with technology has been eye-opening. I couldn't be more shock if a good friend came up to me and said 'Look! If I attach a worm to the end of a string and throw it into the water, the worm turns into a fish!' :-| For *most* people, clicking the mouse and selecting menu items are nothing more than gestures in a magical incantation that will inspire the computer god to do them a favour. They share these incantations with each other or follow detailed instructions in "guides for dummies" or allow a 'wizard' :-) to help them through it. They have little understanding of what they are actually doing. (feeding fish a worm) The people I've help are "rational and intelligent adults", masters in their field of expertise, many far more successful than I'll ever be. That, however, rarely translates into computer savvy. It still is always safer to assume that "you can never underestimate the (techno-)stupidity of your customers." If you believe this with every fibre of your being and then accommodate it, you will make gobs and gobs of money!! "Watching and learning how the average person deals with technology has been eye-opening." In your case, I beg to differ... apparantly not. There is no such thing as an 'average' user anymore. The market is too vast and diverse to draw such conclusions and stereotypes. "For *most* people, clicking the mouse and selecting menu items are nothing more than gestures in a magical incantation that will inspire the computer god to do them a favour." Another gross error in your hypothesis...
"That point is that if Mozilla never *gains* significant market share, especially compared to where it is now, *despite* AOL muscle, advertising, bundling deals, word of mouth, etc... that it is *NOT* because of IE being included with Windows... it is because Mozilla simply wasn't accepted by the masses. Period. The end." Out of interest, please provide a link to a talkback or a forum where someone has made this statements. If think you are fighting fathoms. "If, three or four years from now, Mozilla never gains any significant ground in market share then you, or anyone else, can blame IE's inclusion into Windows all you want but the reality will be that the ultimate blame lies within that of Mozilla. To think anything else is a sheer cop out." "Don't blame IE if Mozilla stays bogged down in a 1% (or whatever) market share." This type of simplistic argument might be chic with the "keep it simple" chanting masses but it glosses over the true complexity of reality. "Out of interest, please provide a link to a talkback or a forum" Here's an even easier solution. Go to the one of many thousands of non-browser related forums and put your theories to them as to how they will only use what sits in front of them and that most of them are mentally challenged when it comes to clicking a mouse. You'll be quite surprised in the responses you receive... "If think you are fighting fathoms" Nope... just you and possibly a few other misguided souls. "This type of simplistic argument might be chic with the "keep it simple" chanting masses but it glosses over the true complexity of reality" Quite the opposite, this *simple* reality disrupts your complex rationalizations that assist you in sleeping better at night.
"Quite the opposite, this *simple* reality disrupts your complex rationalizations that assist you in sleeping better at night." After giving it a seconds more thought... I take the above completley back. Your theories and hypothesis are actually the ones that are truly simplistic and unrealistic: 1. You define an 'average' user. 2. You say this 'average' composes the bulk of the internet usage market. 3. You further say that these 'average' users do not possess the ability to use anything other than what sits in front of them. 4. You equate the 'computer savvy' of the 'average' user to that of my mother. You are dead wrong on all four counts. Now, your theory is that these non-techy, non-savvy computer users that somehow compose the bulk of the internet usage market... will not use anything other than what sits in front of them. The good news here is that you needn't worry any more, as via a simple 'true to life' acid test, I can put that theory, right now, completely to rest. You see, I know many folks (both in the walks of life and via web) who are far from 'computer savvy' who have managed to completely oust their usage of software that was included with Windows in favor of something else. Whether it be a web browser, multimedia player, etc... This fact completely and totally discredits your 'theory' as to what an 'average' user will do. As is usually the case at Mozillazine... I can lead a horse to the water... but I can't make him drink it.
#180 You assume too much about my beliefs and motives.by ipottinger Wednesday January 16th, 2002 11:39 AM "The good news here is that you needn't worry any more, as via a simple 'true to life' acid test, I can put that theory, right now, completely to rest. You see, I know many folks (both in the walks of life and via web) who are far from 'computer savvy' who have managed to completely oust their usage of software that was included with Windows in favor of something else. Whether it be a web browser, multimedia player, etc... This fact completely and totally discredits your 'theory' as to what an 'average' user will do. " They have managed this only because website and browser have collaborated to make "downloading" as simple as a click. When FTP was the predominate way to get files off the internet, most people were stuck. They were stuck with what they had and stuck to it. Now, even the ratio of people who can master "downloading" is shrinking when compared to the growing number of new people using the net. Software of the future will have to transparently handle even this simple task if it hopes to succeed in the market place of tommorrow. What a beautiful rebuttal... I'll get off track and indulge you, though, if for anything but humors sake. "They have managed this only because website and browser have collaborated to make "downloading" as simple as a click" hehe! I'll be sure to let them know that. Thank the high heavens for this elaborate technology that has existed for the past 8+ years. Your statement bears striking resemblance to what Bill Gates himself once said. "When FTP was the predominate way to get files off the internet, most people were stuck. They were stuck with what they had and stuck to it." Yeah... they were stuck alright. Back in those days they were stuck buying Netscape off of the retail shelves for $39.95 a pop.
"People *will* use what they are given despite better alternative" This is hilarious. I'm arguing this point to a non-IE user. Are you using Linux or something? If you're using a particular flavor of Windows, I'm confused as to how you are using anything other than IE given what you say. Or perhaps you are suggesting that other users lack the capacity to choose the software that they use... especially after they have gained a bit of computing experience. fist....Mozilla is damn stable for me, it crashes far less than IE or Windows itself (again for me). Also I can browse the web, send and read my email and sometimes put a quick page together without noticing any real problems so I think it is quite usable. Als long as your claims for marketshare. Let's use a "finished" product named Opera. It is damn fast, relatively stable and most people think it's simply perfectly usable. And it's marketshare? Is it noticable? Do I know any one who uses it? I heard remotely of such persons. So who fits this in your theory about "if it's usable it gets its marketshare regardless of IE bundled to Windows or not". So to bring some real facts in the discussion (something you didn't till now) I as a user think that Mozilla is stable, usable and even fast enough (on my PII 450). And a finished, usable, and fast product doesn't have any real marketshare. "fist....Mozilla is damn stable for me, it crashes far less than IE or Windows itself (again for me)." "Again for me"... That's the real trick here isn't it. Unfortunatley, the market hasn't come to bear similar perceptions. "Let's use a "finished" product named Opera." Ok, let's. Considering that Opera didn't really start to shine until v5 and that it carries a $30 *price* tag, it has made remarkable progress. Not to mention that its default user agent string identifies it as IE5 rather than Opera for optimum site compatibility... including the fact that it supports a few common IEisms. What is this again about market share? "So to bring some real facts in the discussion (something you didn't till now) I as a user think that Mozilla is stable, usable and even fast enough (on my PII 450)." Really? Ok, here are some more facts for you to swallow. Performance wise, Mozilla runs like a bloated pig on a Celeron-500 w/128 MB RAM. Forget the UI, stability, and reliability problems... just in performance the evidence is right before my own eyes. Whether I compare to IE, Opera, or NS4... the difference is as plain as day!! In fact, I'll doublecheck for your own satisfaction: Okay, I'm launching IE... boom! In my face. Now I'm gonna launch Opera6... here we go... boom!... In my face. Okay, here's NS4... a tad of griding there but there it is... whammo! Now to Moz... okay... theres the splash screen... okay wait.. what's going on here... oh yeah.. wait... ok, I see... there it is. Ah, finally. Let's open the address book... ummm... whats going on here? Where is it? Ah, there it is. Ok, let's open a new mail window... here we go... now wait just a darn minute... where is the thing? I know I just chose to open a mail window... ah, ok... here it is finally. Now let me manage some bookmarks in Moz... ah wonderful, speedy and responsive as usual (not). Hmmm.. why is this thing apparantly waiting for every damn command I issue it, I wonder?? Ad infinitum..... "And a finished, usable, and fast product doesn't have any real marketshare." That statement is just oozing with reason... "that its default user agent string identifies it as IE5 rather than Opera for optimum site compatibility... including the fact that it supports a few common IEisms." is not a statement that supports your argument. In fact it supports the opposite - that usability has no effect on marketshare! As for your opinion on the performance and stability of Mozilla on your machine, well, you're entitled to it. If I were to use my experience and the opinions of my friends and family then I would have to conclude that Mozilla is already in a state that should be acceptable to the general public. However, I'm not naive enough to think that what I think is what everyone else will think! "And a finished, usable, and fast product doesn't have any real marketshare," ie: Opera, is a statement of fact that runs contrary to your arguements. No reasoning is necessary. Many facts elude reasoning - though this one doesn't. The reasons are the $30 price tag and the fact that "People *will* use what they are given despite better alternatives" "As for your opinion on the performance and stability of Mozilla on your machine" It has nothing to do with opinion nor my own machine. All of this is quite measurable, quantifiable, and reproducable. Period. "Opera, is a statement of fact that runs contrary to your arguements. No reasoning is necessary. Many facts elude reasoning - though this one doesn't" huh? "People *will* use what they are given despite better alternatives" Dead wrong. > > "People *will* use what they are given despite better alternatives" > Dead wrong Well, actually, it's true quite often. But.. The typical conversation I have with people is this: Someone: "I tried that URL you sent but it didn't work for some reason.." Me: "Oh? What browser did you use?" Someone: "Netscape 4.x" Me: "Oh, that could be it.. Do you have IE?" Someone: "I don't want to use IE.. [insert story about MS world domination, security risks or similar here]" Me: "That's ok, do you have Mozilla or Netscape 6.x?" Someone: "No, that REALLY sucks!" I see this pattern repeating a lot.. I was completely unsurprised when I saw NS 6.0 get such bad feedback. I'm completely unsurprised that 6.1 and 6.2 have failed to regain any significant marketshare. I'm really positively surprised by the development of Mozilla lately. Most, if not all of the performance problems are gone (thanks to the Mail & News performance work and conversion to use outliner instead of trees), I don't have any stability issues, execpt for the usual nightly build quirks every once in a while.. There are still some problems with basic things like bookmarks (STILL - can you believe it!!??! after all this time!!) but I'm pretty confident now that a Mozilla 1.0 some months from now will be a really great product. A potential Netscape 6.5 or 7.0 based on Mozilla 1.0 will probably get really good reviews and public feedback. But to say that the current Mozilla or Netscape versions are "better quality" than IE and to cite CNET reviews or similar as proof is just being blind to what the big masses out there are saying. Really.. talk with some people that work in web design houses that use browsers for a living and talk to clients who use the web sites with a wide range of browsers.. I'm pretty sure that you'll find, on average, that people aren't even taking Mozilla or Netscape seriously right now. The few Netscape users I know are all still using 4.x - and that includes my friend who works at AOL. They have all tried 6.x (including 6.2) but they have all gone back to 4.x. So how would one measure the general public opinion on something like this? I really don't know.. maybe a telephone interview with 1000 randomly picked people? All I have to go on is my first hand experience and web site statistics of various sites and those are all saying that Mozilla & Netscape 6.x are currently completely marginal. I have great hopes for 1.0 & Netscape 6.5/7.0 tho.. That's something I didn't have three years ago.. or two.. or even one. #133 If it were my site you'd be staring at ads galore!by ipottinger Monday January 14th, 2002 10:58 PM I checked my financial statements just to make sure and, no, you have *not* charged me a cent for use of MozillaZine. You don't owe me or anyone else a thing with regards to its look, function, content or whatever. It's ridiculous of me to offer or deny you permission to do whatever the h.e.doublehockeysticks you want to do with this site regardless of its impact on me. It's your site and your right to do what you want! That said, I'd like to express my heart felt appreciation for the time and effort you have spent on creating a resource that I find both invaluable and enjoyable. Thanks Jason et all for *allowing* us to share the fruits of your labour. The fact that so many have voluntarily offer financial support to your site is a testament to its real world value. Why others insist on "looking a gift horse in the mouth" is beyond me. Your solicitation for suggestions to improve the site was "gracious" and by no mean a necessity since, as you well know, you can make changes unilaterally. The self-centred laying down of demands that the site function this way or that is incredible. How many people you wish to accommodate at this site is your choice and how you go about implementing that decision is your business. Your offer to listen to the thoughts and suggestion of others should have been met with more gratitude. (You would almost think they believe MozillaZine was a service that they purchased with their copy of Mozilla!! Yikes!!) #134 Re: If it were my site you'd be staring at ads galby CatamountJck Monday January 14th, 2002 11:15 PM Here here! I'll second everything you just said in a heartbeat! I would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to all of those people who contribute to make Mozillazine a success - both for your dedication and your generosity. Regardless of what anyone says negatively, I think the mozilla community at large is in debt to you for having provided such a valuable resouce over the last few years. Keep up the good work! Older browsers will see Mozillazine as pages of unformatted text and images. Perhaps you could put a notification for older browsers and a suggestion that they install Mozilla for the display to look nicer. See http://www.webstandards.org/upgrade/tips.html for methods on how to accomplish this. heh... this is horrible in IE. I love it. But maybe there should be a thing that says that the site looks better in Mozilla and provide a screenshot. It will show people how IE sucks. It might be simpler if you only have one standards-compliant CSS file, use the @import method to hide it from older browsers and let browsers other than Mozilla render it as strangely as it wants. There are workarounds out there for most rendering glitches on current browsers. See this is a good reference http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/box_lesson/ In the rush to standards compliance, no tables, and tons of CSS, please be sure to keep the site accessable. I suggest you validate the HTML, CSS and Accesability and put those buttons on the site to advertise compliance. Here is todays output from Bobby and the HTML Validator: Priority 1 Accessibility Priority 1 User Checks User checks are triggered by something specific on the page; however, you need to determine whether they apply. Bobby AAA Approval requires that none of them apply to your page. Please review these 5 item(s): 1. Provide alternative content for each SCRIPT that conveys important information or functionality. 2. If style sheets are ignored or unsupported, are pages still readable and usable? 3. If you use color to convey information, make sure the information is also represented another way. (13 instances) Lines 15, 16, 23, 24, 28, 29, 30, 31, 62, 107, 148, 202, 230 4. If the submit button is used as an image map, use separate buttons for each active region. (1 instance) Line 194 5. If an image conveys important information beyond what is in its alternative text, provide an extended description. (13 instances) Lines 15, 16, 23, 24, 28, 29, 30, 31, 62, 107, 148, 202, 230 The following 3 item(s) are not triggered by any specific feature on your page, but are still important for accessibility and are required for Bobby AAA Approved status. 6. If you can't make a page accessible, construct an alternate accessible version. 7. Identify any changes in the document's language. 8. Use the simplest and most straightforward language that is possible. Priority 2 Accessibility This page does not meet the requirements for Bobby AAA Approved status. Below is a list of 3 Priority 2 accessibility error(s) found: 1. Nest headings properly. (8 instances) Lines 44, 53, 62, 68, 76, 81, 89, 100 2. Make sure event handlers do not require use of a mouse. (1 instance) Line 122 3. Explicitly associate form controls and their labels with the LABEL element. (8 instances) Lines 149, 172, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217 Priority 2 User Checks User checks are triggered by something specific on the page; however, you need to determine whether they apply. Bobby AAA Approval requires that none of them apply to your page. Please review these 8 item(s): 1. Use style sheets to control layout and presentation wherever possible. 2. Make sure that labels of all form controls are properly placed. 3. If there are logical groupings of form controls, use FIELDSET with LEGEND on each group. (4 instances) Lines 146, 169, 186, 205 4. If scripts create pop-up windows or change the active window, make sure that the user is aware this is happening. (1 instance) Line 132 5. Make sure header elements are not used only for bold text. 6. Check that the foreground and background colors contrast sufficiently with each other. (13 instances) Lines 15, 16, 23, 24, 28, 29, 30, 31, 62, 107, 148, 202, 230 7. If this gif image is animated, make sure it does not contain fast or distracting motion. (14 instances) Lines 15, 16, 23, 24, 28, 29, 30, 31, 62, 107, 148, 194, 202, 230 8. Mark up any quotations with the Q and BLOCKQUOTE elements. The following 7 item(s) are not triggered by any specific feature on your page, but are still important for accessibility and are required for Bobby AAA Approved status. 9. Make sure that all link phrases make sense when read out of context. 10. Group related elements when possible. 11. Make sure your document validates to formal published grammars. 12. Is there a site map or table of contents, a description of the general layout of the site, the access features used, and how to use them? 13. Is there a clear, consistent navigation structure? 14. Use the latest technology specification available whenever possible. 15. Where it's possible to mark up content (for example mathematical equations) instead of using images, use a markup language (such as MathML). Priority 3 Accessibility This page does not meet the requirements for Bobby AAA Approved status. Below is a list of 3 Priority 3 accessibility error(s) found: 1. Identify the language of the text. (1 instance) Line 2 2. Include default, place-holding characters in edit boxes and text areas. (2 instances) Lines 172, 223 3. Separate adjacent links with more than whitespace. (18 instances) Lines 65, 107, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 118, 130, 131, 161, 162, 163, 165, 166, 167, 168 Priority 3 User Checks User checks are triggered by something specific on the page; however, you need to determine whether they apply. Bobby AAA Approval requires that none of them apply to your page. Please review these 6 item(s): 1. Consider furnishing keyboard shortcuts for form elements. 2. Consider specifying a logical tab order among form controls, links and objects. 3. Use the ABBR and ACRONYM elements to denote and expand any abbreviations and acronyms that are present. 4. If you have grouped links, is there a link at the beginning to bypass the group? 5. If there are logical groups of links, have they been identified? 6. Consider adding keyboard shortcuts to frequently used links. The following 5 item(s) are not triggered by any specific feature on your page, but are still important for accessibility and are required for Bobby AAA Approved status. 7. Is there distinguishing information at the beginning of headings, paragraphs, lists, etc.? 8. If there is a search feature, are there different types of searches for different skill levels and preferences? 9. Are there navigation bars for easy access to the navigation structure? 10. Do you allow users to customize their experience of the web page? 11. Is there a consistent style of presentation between pages? © Copyright 1996-2001, CAST, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Use of this software is subject to the CAST Software License Agreement. Send feedback to bobbyww@cast.org. Additional information available at the Bobby Home Page. HTML Validation Service Results URI: Server: Apache-ADTI/1.3.22 (Unix) mod_gzip/1.3.19.1a mod_throttle/3.1.2 PHP/4.0.6 mod_ssl/2.8.5 OpenSSL/0.9.6b Detected Character Encoding: iso-8859-1 Select Character Encoding: Current Doctype: HTML 4.0 Strict Select Doctype: Options: Show Source Outline Parse Tree ...no attributes Below are the results of attempting to parse this document with an SGML parser. ? Line 23, column 50: ? ... /image/separator.gif" width="1" height="19" align="absmiddle" alt=""> ^ Error: there is no attribute "ALIGN" for this element (in this HTML version) Sorry, this document does not validate as HTML 4.0 Strict. If you use CSS in your document, you should also check it for validity using the W3C CSS Validation Service. Gerald Oskoboiny Last modified: Date: 2001/09/14 04:13:13 display: table; on a load of <div>s is just as inappropriate as using <table>s everywhere, except that it is even worse due to "Conforming HTML user agents may ignore the 'display' property." (see http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/visuren.html#propdef-display). There are plenty of CSS sites out, describing the use of floated layouts etc. The new HTML is slightly better on Mac IE5.1, but there are still lots of anomalies. The sidebars needs to be set to align=float so content will flow around them; as it is, they're sitting on top of the content and obscuring it. The header and message boxes have no margin and stretch all the way from the left of the page to the right. The message edit box is considerably wider than the page, making it necessary to scroll horizontally back and forth while typing. The "Reply to this message" links in flat mode always point to the first message instead of the message the link is on. There may be other problems that will become more visible once these are fixed -- as it is, it's hard to even see the site through all the cruft, so these errors may be masking out other errors. I was trying to find a place where I could submit suggestions for future releases of Mozilla 1.x. My suggestion involves the Popblocker. Some web sites I use I need to allow some popups and need to block others. A popup stopped I used to use(can't remember what it was called) would allow you to temporarily disable the popup blocker by holding shift or alt. That sure would be a neat feature to have on Mozilla. Let me know. CSMGJ@YAHOO.COM |