French 'SVM' Magazine Recommends Mozilla

Thursday October 2nd, 2003

Hervé of MozillaZine-Fr wrote in to tell us that the leading French computing paper SVM has a two-page article on alternative browsers in its October 2003 issue. While the feature mostly focuses on the Mozilla Application Suite (author Nicolas Robaux's favourite), it also covers Mozilla Firebird and Konqueror. A link to the frenchmozilla translation project is included.

Hervé was informed about the article by former Netscape evangelist Tristan Nitot, who is featured in the piece. Tristan's recent weblog posting has more details and includes several excerpts (for those who do not speak French, Google has an automated English translation). The full article is available in the October 2003 print edition of SVM, which costs €4.25.

#1 translation

by mlefevre

Friday October 3rd, 2003 10:45 AM

A better translation of Tristan's blog entry (with help from the man himself on IRC :)

The article of the year

... and I'm not saying that because I'm mentioned in it. Appearing yesterday in SVM no. 177, this article by Nicolas Robaux is one of the best informed there is. I’m not always sympathetic to the French tech press, but I have to acknowledge that with this article, Nicolas raises the average greatly.

"Some say that Microsoft is resting on its laurels, and one of those is Tristan Nitot, one of the coordinators of Mozilla promotion in Europe. 'MSHTML, Internet Explorer's engine on the PC, is aging, and they won't be updating it before 2005."

Ooh... I should be ashamed of kicking them when they're down.

There is also a quote from the excellent David Bellot, who is in charge of FrenchMozilla.org, and then a long paragraph on the importance of the standards:

"The last thing that explains this sudden revival of browsers: web standards, notably XHTML and CSS, which webmasters are respecting more and more when constructing sites. Thanks to them, the sites display correctly, whatever the browser. The nightmare of webmasters who had, last century, to test their sites with every browser is over: one does not write any more for such-and-such browser, but for all browsers in one hit. The result: one hardly finds any sites that don't work in browsers other than IE. Even better, as the alternative browsers are more recent, and implement web standards better, many sites are more beautiful under Mozilla than under Internet Explorer."

Right, one last quote (I have to stop before I’m accused of pumping):

"Mozilla, our favourite (...) It is equipped with dozens of innovative functions, of which most pleasant are tabbed browsing, Spam filtering, and the blocking of pop-ups and advertising banners. The browser only, with the other modules removed, is available under the name of Firebird."

In conclusion, if you like the simple pleasures, invest 4.25 little euros in the October 2003 issue of SVM. In addition, you will be entitled to screen shots of Mozilla, of FireBird, respectively showing web pages from FrenchMozilla.org and LinuxFR.org. When one thinks about it, that a journalist visits these kinds of sites is additional proof of his competence, is it not?