Nerdy News
Sure they’re British, but check out the products at Cash’n'Carrion. I especially liked their “O’Really” stuff that spoofs those wonderful O’Reilly guides. The only thing I wished they carried was stupid 1337-speak gear. That would roxxor =).
Anyway, I recently heard about the “Death of Netscape” and I thought I’d offer some thoughts. Yes, I know this isn’t exactly breaking news, but everybody was complaining about the rash of virus infections months after Microsoft had already posted a patch for it. There is another article from the same website located here. When I first started designing webpages, I primarily designed in Netscape and checked for IE compatibility. This has changed dramatically in recent years, as now I design using IE as my default browser and give just passing glances at how my page looks in Netscape (if it displays, that’s good enough for me). In some ways, I like the fact that I don’t need to pull crazy tricks to make sure my pages look nice in both browsers. Because so few people use Netscape nowadays, the fact that Netscape doesn’t seem to display my CSS right doesn’t even bother me.
While my lazy side enjoys the standardization, my logical side tells me that this development will allow Microsoft to continue to offer a mediocre browser product. It used to be that Netscape’s browser was far superior to IE, but with the release of Netscape 6.0, I became convinced that this was no longer the case. Man, I hated that browser. For the most part, I never went back. In recent times, more and more people have done what I did and simply designed for IE, and Netscape has had a steady decline in popularity.
For those of you Microsoft-haters out there, there is still some hope, mostly in the forms of Opera and the Mozilla Foundation. Once I get broadband, I may download and try these two browsers, but it’s very likely I won’t bother checking their compatibility with my website any time soon. Tycho from Penny Arcade, chimed in on this debate a little while ago. Even though I haven’t tried either yet, I will share my first impressions of each. While screenshots may not do them justice, I can’t see what separates Mozilla 1.4 or Mozilla Firebird 0.6.1 from IE, or even previous incarnations of Netscape.
I checked out their suggested reasons to switch and was not particularly impressed. There are mods of IE that offer tabbed browsing or popup blocking, and hard drive space is pretty easy to come by nowadays. And because so many people design for IE, it’s hard to see a different browser having better compatibility. I don’t hate Microsoft enough to use Linux (XP was a fairly solid product in spite of security holes), and I don’t think I hate IE enough to use Mozilla. I’ll see if they change my mind in the future. As for Opera, there seem to be no major improvements, and instead there are ads while you browse! And you have to pay to get the ads off! I know they’re trying to make money, but IE is already installed and free. With no ads. Opera would have to be insanely better to justify paying for it, and I see this as being an even bigger longshot then Mozilla.
Also, is there really any point to skinning your browser? I believe a good browser shouldn’t take up a lot of space with its interface, ergo there should be very little area to skin.
Elsewhere Online | Kabitzin 8/28/2003
