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As to the Opera.. Well, first of ALL IT IS NOT FREE! I do not like to watch the banner and I do not want to pay for the browser.
And, PEOPLE STILL DO NOT USE THAT! (My logs show 1-2%)
So, the result : another good technology that has no big future. Nowdays it is much better to have the marketing team than the developers team!
I use Opera just to test my projects!
No arguing here, I wasn't trying to get anyone to switch browsers, I was just hoping people would try out the new mozilla before ranting about how hard it's going to be to code for it.
I personally don't use mozilla (currently), but after the huge disappointed I felt after downloading netscape6 I am rather pleased with the progress they've made. It's too bad you weren't able to do some testing of your own.
As far as the claims of "difficulty" in coding for Netscape 6.x & Mozilla, that is not an issue at all. Netscape/Mozilla will be easy to code for... that's what Standards are all about.
In fact, I WANT to see NS6.x succeed as well as Mozilla. Both are great regarding Web Standards and CSS. The more Web Standards compliant user-agents the better!
As I said previosly, let the "useability" features offered by the browser vendors be the reason for choosing one over the other... not because one person prefers the <marquee> tag over <blink>!
NeoN, regarding Opera webstats: Opera 6 for Windows installs with the default settings for it to be identified as IE5 - most users of Opera never change this setting. Consequently, Opera is severely under-reported in useage stats.
I have my Opera configured to be IDENTIFIED as Opera (F12/Quick Preferences - Identify as Opera) and have only switched to ID as IE5 twice (for propriety scripting reasons).
Download.com is showing a 93% approval rating, Opera is the most popular browser download offered at Download.com - its figures far outpace IE6 & NN6 and even Mozilla (all from Download.com of course).
The point I want to clarify, is that I have experienced problems with NN6.0+ on numerous occasions, including a test suite of 20 workstations. At the time I was the MIS/IT Supervisor for a Michigan casino. Granted, that was with NS6.1 which I doubt many would attempt to claim as a "rock solid" release.
Speaking strictly Windows, Netscape & Mozilla still have not overcome "system resource" issues. Try and try again, I still am not satisfied with the offerings.
Someday? I actually hope so! Until then (if ever), I will continue to use Opera and watch as the (under-reported) statistics mount.
By the way... I was researching browser stats last night, and I came across a number of University sites where Opera actually showed higher useage than NS6.x -- shocked me at first... a little. Please keep in mind this does not include the Opera browsers using the default "Identify as IE5" settings.
Good Luck AOL/Netscape! I truly DO wish you well. I do have some confidence that eventually the Netscape problems will be solved. Really, I do... word!
What scares me is that AOL is so huge, and represents (like it or not) a large chunk of the surfing population. They have the potential for pushing a sub-par buggy browser on hundreds of thousands of users. You really think AOL is going to give it all there effort, when they haven't been able to succeed as of late?
I don't like Netscape, I don't trust Netscape. When a company (big or small) releases a product and it consistently crashes my computer (which I keep tighter than a nun's ...) It upsets me. It scares me.
It's amazing to me that with all the bucks behind AOL they can't make a product as stable and clean and efficent as Opera. Ask me and they need to scrap the whole thing and start over.
-meannate
Running Mozilla 1.0 RC - took me awhile to get it to load, I had to first unistall my Crescendo 5.1 player (mmmm... Crescendo's gonna love that!), then launch Mozilla "offline" because it kept banging heads with my SBC DSL drivers, finally after some more tweakin' I was able to get "Moz-One" to launch... after four failed attempts, I think I may have the "issues" resolved.
Played around with Composer just a bit, got to send in my first "Talk Back" report as well, when Composer brought Mozilla to its knees when I tried to open/import a webpage (my own). Wrote some nice (really) words for the boys back at Mozilla.org and then did the litmus test: relaunched witout rebooting!
Okay... start nice and easy, careful... careful... don't want any crashes now. Ahhh... there!
Alright, next I did what any other software tester would do - I went and downloaded the Pinball Skin for Moz! A bit better than the absolutely horrid "classic" skin or the "sparse" Modern skin, but not even CLOSE to my latest Opera Aqua/Mac skin ( with button shadows no less!).
So, here I am... I will give "Moz-One" a fair shake - but one thing is already apparent: the GUI and interface are both lagging far behind Opera's.
So, I'm off to burn some "urls" - I'll keep a close eye on the results... and have Opera waiting in the wings! Very close indeed! ;)
Okay, 30 minutes have passed. I'll have to do this in small doses; Moz feels too "kludgie" - back to Opera's speed and elegance! :)
It's no secret that every program has bugs, it's to be expected. But the general concept of a web browser, without and extra gizmos and extensions (javascript & all that DHTML jazz) would seem to be fairly simple. It's not like you're computing rocket logistics... it's basically text, and images... and flash... and javascript... and dynamic this and that... okay, I can see where things could get ugly.
How do they make this so complicated? Why is a browser, such as Opera, clean and efficent. When Netscape is so overloaded and top heavy? WHY GOD WHY?!?!
-meannate
Maybe the platform it's running on was made by forward thinking saboteurs.
You don't end up in federal court with the government breathing down your neck for no reason.
Man, not even two days since I posted that comment and 1.0 is here. I like it!
