“Is this the end of Netscape? So much for Netscape 8.0” C|net says. Where does that leave the Mozilla project? After Apple and Microsoft, Real and Amazon get into online music business. IBM launches Lotus admin Kit resources for Win/Linux/Mac. How-to animation in SDL. 3D UI for Windows Desktops. Revolution 2.0 development tool released. New Gnumeric screenshot. Review of Poseidon USB, a USB stack for Amiga/MorphOS, plus a benchmark of AmigaONE against Pegasos and AthlonXP.
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About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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So, Netscape got officially netscaped…
Mozilla is likely to loose a lot of their cushy funding, but I think that they have enough of a following that it won’t matter. Of course, AOL still needs Netscape/Mozilla for OS X.
I don’t know…I don’t think the Mozilla project will be all that hurt by this. NS 7 was mainly Moz code anyway, and its company wasn’t all that critical to the project (besides releasing the code, obviously).
Yeah, the funding is a big thing. Maybe ask Apple for $?
>I don’t think the Mozilla project will be all that hurt by this.
Actually it is. The very “funny” (and different) thing about Mozilla, was that while it got a lot of users, _very few_ developers have joined the development team. Development is driven by ex-Netscape and other AOL developers and not by third party collaboration so much as in other OSS projects. I personally believe that Mozilla _will_ get hurt by this. Then, there is the domain name and web and bandwidth space which has been plenty fast because of AOL. But what now?
>Yeah, the funding is a big thing. Maybe ask Apple for $?
Apple doesn’t care about Mozilla, they have Safari.
Isn’t Camino Gecko-based?
Also, if they’re ex-Netscape developers, then I don’t see why they should stop working. Did AOL pay them for it? Besides, how many of them are working on Firebird–since that looks to be the browser’s future?
>Isn’t Camino Gecko-based?
Yes, but Camino has nothing to do with Apple.
>if they’re ex-Netscape developers, then I don’t see why they should stop working. Did AOL pay them for it?
Yes, they were paid. Tehrefore, I don’t see them working for free. No way.
I wonder if AOL (my ISP) looked into a deal with Opera before they signed on with Microsoft. Opera on Windows XP is fast and much more usable than AOL’s browser, although it crashes a lot (v 7.10).
The hardest part of a browser is the rendering engine. Coding a UI on top of it is easy.
Even if the few non-netscape developers stop working on Mozilla there will always be KHTML (Konqueror’s and Safari’s open source rendering engine). I don’t think anybody cares which rendering engine they use as long as it’s fast and renders 99% of web pages.
And I thought AOL was going the way of Netscape. It seems kinda strange that they’d do all this work to get Mozilla to the point where it is, and then just drop it. But on the other hand, for $750 Million … would you have done the same thing?
Whatever the case – I hope Mozilla (or at least Firebird) will continue being developed. If not, I guess at least we have Opera and the KHTML browsers – afterall, at least something besides IE is better than nothing.
this is good news (AOL/IE)… Not that I wouldn’t like AOL to push Mozilla out to the masses in order to foster a new order of standards compliance.. but the simple fact is, that at the end of the legal wranglings, the result is that both sides have realised that the browser space is not something to be fought over anymore. The war is over, and no-body has won really – which is a ‘good thing'(TM).. yes MS may still command the market share in browsers, but we have finally got over the battle, and there are many players (Opera, Mozilla and derivatives, Konqueror and derivatives) that are playing on what, for all intensive purposes, has become a level playing field. The relative advantages of one browser over the next has become essentially a mute point, and proprietary extensions don’t win any hearts or minds anymore.
The King is dead, long live the king etc etc etc
If anyone has tried this please post your opinions.
This looks like it requires a faster machine than what I’ve got right now, otherwise I’d try it myself.
>If anyone has tried this please post your opinions.
http://download.com.com/3302-2346_4-10188001.html
Hmm, am I the only one reminded of Microsoft BOB? š
Actually, I’m skeptical as to C|net, aren’t they owned by herr gates? Also, if it’s true, could be a misdirection move by Netscape communications corperation. Or it could be signs of ominous times, but I really think “Netscape” will just change.
There’s a lot going on in Firebird.. there’s a lot bound to be going on with R and D.. who knows?
C|net sites don’t load well in firebird.. no need to wonder why.
Eugenia, thanks for the news about gnumeric! This means that gnumeric2 is getting close. I’m so glad that I can get news like this here! Thank you!
C|Net is owned by MS’s Paul Allen, I believe. Seems to load fine for me…
ARGH! When am I gonna see all these Firebird problems people keep reporting?? I use .5-4 and it’s really good!
“Yeah, the funding is a big thing. Maybe ask Apple for $?”
Apple is using KHTML, the rendering engine for Konqueror, in their browser (Safari).
No $$$ there for Netscape.
Netscape was far much better off without AOL. One mistake Netscape did when the onslaught by IE started was continue to act like they own the market. They failed to realize whom they are facing with- a company which amplifies every bad move Netscape.
AOL now pretty much is stagnant. This is most probably the merger, I don’t know. One thing for sure, AOL executives need to make AOL profitable again. They need to cut cost all round. And they need to use all their assets as much as possible in the pursuit of profitablity. Right now, I think they spliting the company informally into two, one the previous Time Warner and the other AOL for easier management.
On the Netscape case, AOL could very well use it for profit. The portal of Netscape should be merged with AOL’s portal, and the same with the browser. So what if they continue using IE – the big asset of Netscape I believe is the portal. Right now, AOL is barely using it (much better when they first bought it – never used it). It is not pushing it to the limit. AOL failed to see how consumers are frustated with other portals and what it can do to pull them towards the AOL.
In other words, f*ck Netscape.
And as for Mozilla, maintain development. AOL could always use something to threaten Microsoft with.
Netscape has gone down hill since we left netscape 4.7. It has become bloated and slow. Not to mention the annoyance that it has caused for those in tech support. I would be happy to see more browsers that are fast at start-up and are quick at loading pages(i.e., camino, safari). Mozilla is really nice, but it is slow in start-up. For all those that don’t use a mac, camino, a derivative of mozilla, leaves the mozilla browser in the dust with respect to start-up and loading.
All the A1 benchmarks so far have only G3@600Mhz or G4@800Mmz, but afaik the A1 can use any G4-model (newest PowerMacs have 1,4Ghz if i’m not mistaken), so it would be nice to see somebody putting one of those babys to A1 and running some AltiVec-optimized benchmarks
Its so huge and complex that nobody understands it. I mean, they cannot figure out how to make it perform well because it performs badly in so many places.
They are forced to do things like repaint entire windows every time the cursor blinks, because it is too hard to figure out how to avoid doing this with the current architecture.
Somehow I doubt that anybody at Netscape set out to design a browser that repainted the entire screen to make the cursor blink, but thats what they have come up with.
What amazes me is that rendering a web page should not actually be that difficult. I find myself using Dillo or even links2 to get my webmail and stuff because Mozilla is far too sluggish.
Links 2 even supports javascript, and does an incredible job of rendering pages graphically considering it is based on a text-only browser.
It’s no wonder they are considering canning the whole project, because it simply has not acheived the goal of creating a useful browser.
People like the features, but the way they are implemented is awful in terms of performance.
To change the entire tack of the project from ‘One suite to rule them all’ to ‘Separate apps because the big one sucks’ so late in the game just displays incredible ineptitude.
I mean, if 90% of the work is in the last 10% of the project, in reality it will take the Mozilla team as it exists now another 5 years to acheive what they originally intended.
The one positive point is that it is open source, that was the one good decision they made in the history of the project.
The corpse of this dinosaur can at least be stripped to allow more nimble solutions to evolve.
This is definitely a sad day for Netscape/Mozilla. It’ll probably hurt the Mozilla project, but in the end I think Mozilla will be alright… We just shouldn’t expect things to develope as quickly in the future as they have over the past few years, and there will definitely be a painful period of transition.
As for AOL… I think they’re stupid to sign on with Microsoft again. I mean, Mozilla surely doesn’t cost that much to continue funding. They don’t need to bother with releasing Netscape, but you’d think they’d like it if they could have total control over ever aspect of their product??
Personally I think one day they’ll regret signing on with Microsoft again instead of using Gecko as their rendering engine.
and lastly… It’ll be sad to see Netscape die. As I’ve been a Netscape user since 1997. Although these days I mostly use Mozilla, I still keep the current release of Netscape on my box for old times sake… Ah, the memories.
Not just Microsoft BOB but MS research actually did a 3D UI called TaskGallery almost identical to 3DNA desktop. 3DNA is a cool concept, but they should credit Microsoft Research for the idea.
http://research.microsoft.com/ui/TaskGallery/index.htm
I used it ever since my parents dumped AOL back in 1994 for Earthlink (wow!!! unlimitend dial up at 14.4!!!!) snif….it was such a good time all around for the web back then š damn corperat wars and exploitation killed that web.
netscape was aol’s baby. Time Warner are now clearly back in the driver’s seat .
It is not surprising that they settled with MS. There attitude is likely to be
much like that of a typical user.” What are we bothering with this Netscape nonsense for anyway? Everyone uses IE, etc.”
Mozilla should really drop this ” Mozilla is a development version crap,
and get the word out that Netscape was just Mozilla rebranded.
There are probably lots of Netscape users who don’t even know what
Mozilla is. Now is the time to convert them to Mozilla users.
How about 10 people dump, hurl or whiz into a bucket and then Eugenia writes a headline about the way it smells along with a basic synopsis?
Oh, please…Not again.