Rediff Asks if it's Time to Switch to Mozilla or OperaWednesday May 14th, 2003Adam Hauner sent us a link to a rediff.com article about Internet Explorer alternatives such as Mozilla and Opera. The report briefly examines the advantages that the alternative browsers have over IE, including better security, tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking. It also mentions the wide range of Mozilla add-ons that are available, with a special mention given to the NewsMonster RSS feed reader. QUOTE - "For a piece of software that recently celebrated its tenth birthday, IE hasn't changed much . . . " - UNQUOTE. So, IE has been around since Spring 1993 has it . . . ? I don't think so! It seems they're including the history of Mosaic, the browser IE was originally based on. Mosaic was first released in November of 1993 (see: http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/history/mosaic.htm ). I wouldn't consider Mosaic an early version of IE, but apparently rediff does. In which case, the first line "For a piece of software that recently celebrated its tenth birthday . . ." is still misleading, as NCSA Mosaic itself won't be 10 years old for another six months. Anyway, I personally consider Mosaic to be more of forerunner to Netscape than to IE. IIRC, IE was originally based upon a custom version of Mosaic that Microsoft bought from a company called Spyglass in 1994, whereas Netscape was originally built upon a codebase closer to the original NCSA Mosaic. I'm not sure if this means it's from the base Mosaic or from Spyglass's version, but this is from IE's Help > About. "Based on NCSA Mosaic. NCSA Mosaic(TM); was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Distributed under a licensing agreement with Spyglass, Inc." "In which case, the first line 'For a piece of software that recently celebrated its tenth birthday . . .' is still misleading, as NCSA Mosaic itself won't be 10 years old for another six months." NCSA Mosaic celebrated its tenth birthday a few weeks ago. And, of course, there were browsers before that. "IIRC, IE was originally based upon a custom version of Mosaic that Microsoft bought from a company called Spyglass in 1994, whereas Netscape was originally built upon a codebase closer to the original NCSA Mosaic." Spyglass were given the rights to license the Mosaic code to commercial companies (possibly just the Windows version, I don't recall). Netscape contained no Mosaic code but was made by many former members of the Mosaic team. Alex Funny they don't mention how easy it is to block popups with Mozilla/Firebird/etc. That and UserContent.css are my favorite features. IE also has a userContent.css equivalent - you can enable it in Tools -> Internet Options -> General -> Accessibiliy -> User Style Sheet. ...the CSS section seems rather poorly written to me. Especially the "the specification for CSS is still under development" (CSS3 is under development. CSS2 has been out for quite a while now.) and "Opera has a history of adhering to standards and arguably renders CSS pages in the best manner." (Opera 7 is the first one I've seen that has even remotely good CSS.) Those claims may be two separate statements. [ Opera has a history of adhering to standards ] and [ arguably renders CSS pages in the best manner ] It may not mean Opera has a history of rendering CSS pages in the best manner. I never had to "switch from IE" myself, since IE never *was* my main browser! I used Netscape as my main browser from 1995 to 2000, then switched directly to Mozilla. I started with BBS's- then over to Netscape on windows 3.1. It was bundled with my ISP, so it was no biggie. It did crash once and a while- which was a minor problem. IE came along and I decided to give it a try (those were naive times for me). I liked IE because of it seemed to have a cleaner, sort-of prettier interface, which fit better with other windows applications. So that went on, Windows 95 came out eventually- and it wasn't like there was much of a choice between browsers- I was already convinced on IE, so I kept using it... but of course after Windows 95 everyone started to open their eyes to the real Microsoft- and start to see patterns emerging and coming together as to their Internet dominance plans. After that I switched between Netscape/ie/ and eventually mozilla. I abandoned the whole Windows scene once and for all and now I'm on a mac using Safari mainly, sometimes Mozilla/phoenix and Camino. I like the turn Apple took with KHTML, which I had used earlier on a linux system I put together- I really like simplicity, and I really like the way Mozilla is moving. I have used Opera, and am not all that impressed- the emulation modes were neat, but not enough to have me switch over these days (this isn't 1995 anymore). The lesson I learned from all of it was to avoid IE. Yeah I might not use Mozilla for all my browsing needs for a variety of very minor issues, but there is still a place for it in my applications folder- unlike IE which sits and collects digital dust. |