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July 29, 2003
Return of the Browser Wars?
eweek has an article about how Mozilla is now free and can take on IE. I disagree about Netscape holding back mozilla, it was never user end-user friendly. Go to IRC and ask a question, you get sent by someone to #mozillazine. And lets not forget the non-stellar QA for releases (1.2.1 anyone?). Also, Mozilla.org didn't seperate itself from Netscape, Netscape was finally killed, they had no choice. AOL gets 2 million dollars in writeoffs and doesn't get a bad name as the Mozilla killer. They only killed Netscape, and we never did anything for the project anyways, just held it back!
The article however does make a very good point about first concentrating on buisnesses:
"Netscape initially became big because everyone used it at work and then decided to use it at home."
And Gecko is in pretty good shape - strong DOM support for building advanced web applications, the best CSS support for creating an application that looks like a native application, XML/XSLT support to over modularity and Web Services support to get and send data without having to reload the page.
And look at the main backers - IBM, Sun, Redhat. Web applications are cross-platform, as Gecko is available on lots of platforms.
However, if Firebird is to be fast, should it still use XUL? Redhat could easily use Epiphany, which is a native gtk2 app embedding Gecko in a simple UI. Its faster than Firebird and fits with the rest of the Gnome desktop.
But, do enterprises want a small browser or an application suite that does all their communications needs? I would say some want a suite, some a standalone.
Posted by doron at July 29, 2003 10:56 AM
Comments
they can download all of them components separately can't they?
Posted by: h at July 29, 2003 11:06 AM
What other good browsers is on Windows?
Opera too confusing
Posted by: Joe at July 29, 2003 11:13 AM
I don't see many corporates looking for a suite at this point, depending on their current infrastructure. Outlook/Exchange and Lotus Notes are fairly pervasive in those markets, and that's a lot of client/server stuff. Mozilla on the other hand is a client only at this point, and unless IBM is going to have a Mozilla-based Notes client for non-Windows OS (which would be an idea...) then I don't see a foothold into that market.
If the GRE stuff really happens, then Firebird will be a lot faster, and Mail/Calendar would gain a lot of speed as well, making it a good foothold into the low end of the suite market.
Posted by: Mike at July 29, 2003 4:28 PM
To get into companies, Mozilla needed a way to customize it easily for several hundreds of users. Something like CCK for Netscape.
Posted by: daniel. at July 30, 2003 12:05 AM
You Must Promise. To call your mother, to help old ladies cross the road, and to turn your cell phone off at the movies.
Posted by: Ellis at January 26, 2004 10:27 AM
Don't give up, you are close.
Posted by: Eakin Beth at February 27, 2004 11:58 AM