More than 2 years ago, Mozilla was given the job of developing the next great Netscape browser. Ever hear the term Gecko? This is the overhyped engine that hums beneath the hood of the new Netscape browser. It has been talked about for over a year. A real, bug-free example of the Gecko has yet to rear its head.
If Mozilla was controlled by Microsoft, the whole affair would have been chalked up to another case of Vaporware. For those unfamiliar... Vaporware is highly touted software with a release date always in the future. Its main purpose is to keep the perpetrator's name or brand in the public view while they figure out what to do next.
Netscape and America Online have released what they are calling a finished version of Netscape 6. This new software is essentially a brand new browser, with no connection to older versions of Navigator. This new browser is also full of bugs, marketing bloat, and is slow to load and unstable.
Mozilla speaks of 100% standards compliancy. Due to decisions made by the good folks at Mozilla, most existing dynamic HTML scripts won't work under the new browser.
Imagine if your government decided to redesign its currency and also announced that it would not honor older versions. Think about it!
I agree that W3C standards compliance is good... But should Mozilla be allowed to take it upon themselves to force compliancy on the entire web design community... on its terms?
Internet Explorer 5 was developed to be backward compatible and supports scripts written for W3C standards as well as scripts written for Internet Explorer 4. I believe Microsoft was decent enough to provide the Web Development community with a transitional period. I believe IE6 will most like drop support for the IE4 DOM. Why did Mozilla build a browser that isn't backward compatible? Why have they decided to force javascript developers to conform to the W3C standards? Sadly, many web designers are not programmers and rely on the wealth of freely available scripts and extensions to their favorite web editors for their scripting needs. All they'll know is that their pages suddenly won't work.
What Netscape (and Mozilla) is doing is insidious and selfish. They are thinking only of themselves.
The supporters of Netscape are naive. This is not about Microsoft, this is about Netscape. Netscape is counting on prevailing anti-Microsoft sentiments to carry them through and win market share for its failing brand.
If Netscape succeeds, it will be a violation of our rights. They will have succeeded in dictating to us the way in which we design our web sites. We will be forced to do things on their terms and by their schedule. Sounds an awful lot like an AOL tactic to me!
I SAY... BALONEY!
I say: "Listen, Netscape management... you spent the last 3 years evangelizing your version 4 browsers when you knew they were broken and poorly programmed. But you didn't fix them. You issued update after update and all those updates did was add more marketing stuff, more fluff! But the problems were not fixed. You didn't add any more support for CSS. You didn't fix anything meaningful! You are bad people. You are charlatans."
Think hard, my friends, as you continue your support for Netscape. All they had to do was maintain support for their own version 4 browser for one more generation and the web world would be in harmony. Standards will come... but it should not be on Netscape's terms. And the last thing people need is 6 billion AOL CDs circumnavigating America with a plague of poorly written software. What AOL did to its customized Internet Explorer was bad enough. What may be coming makes me cringe.
Note: The first looks at AOL 6 seem to show it still is using MSIE. Silly, but true. But then again, it doesn't take overly intelligent people to create big companies anymore.
Think about this as you worry about all your clients... and how they will react when the sites they paid for no longer work in Netscape. I don't know about you, but I don't like being dictated to.
Al Sparber