Reader Comments -- Netscape Navigator 6.0 to Fail Standards Compliance

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Reader Comments -- Netscape Navigator 6.0 to Fail Standards Compliance
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November 7th, 2000 7:08 AM

Releasing a buggy product will do nothing to slow the trend of the Netscape userbase switching to IE. I am a web-developer - a year or so ago, I developed using Netscape & checked it against IE. Now I use IE and check it against Netscape. If Netscape releases a new product that chokes on standard html/javascript, I will not support it.

Benjamin Liberman

November 7th, 2000 7:07 AM

The continued viability of Netscape as a web browsing platform is crucial for those of us who use desktop machines which don't run IE and aren't ever likely to unless Microsoft gets hit over the head with a really big stick. (in other words, Linux and *BSD)

Significant standards compliance bugs - ones which cause reasonable web pages to be inaccessible - are a risk to this viability. Basically, if you own the market (like IE does now) then people work around your bugs, but if you don't (Netscape) then people say "tough", and the web fills up with pages your users can't access, and the spiral continues.

Peter Desnoyers

November 7th, 2000 7:06 AM

I must agree completely with the article.

I work in an all-Microsoft shop, designing an internet application that will work only in IE 5.0+. Every day I have to defend Netscape, saying the traditional "Just wait...it will be better!". I install the "preview" releases and use them. i use it as often as possible. I even prefer it to IE. But, at this point I might as well let go of that tuft of grass I'm holding onto (dangling from the cliff over the gulch of Microsoft Domination) and just fall. What is the use, if the marketing engine has taken over the development cycle, making it more importatnt to release code than fix a misspelled word. This is truly a sad day.

I sincerely believe that Netscape/AOL has more to lose by releasing a broken browser as 6.0 than it has to gain by meeting a release date, or even than it has to lose by slipping the date a few months to work in the patches.

Sign me --
Just another Netscape evangelist on the verge of defecting.

Mike Colville

November 7th, 2000 7:06 AM

For a lightning fast, standards compliant, and small footprint web browser, check out iCab, www.icab.de. This web browser beats both IE and Netscape, and even supports tags such as <BLINK> <MULTICOL> and more. The only catch is you have to have a Macintosh.

Michael Stewart

November 7th, 2000 7:05 AM

As a web developer, I will be extremely disappointed if Netscape ships this buggy version. Sure, geeks will usually be current with any application by installing patches, but you cannot expect the regular public to do the same. Non-computer savy people are still using Netscape 3 and IE 4. You think when these people finally upgrade to Netscape 6.0 that a month later, they'll download and install the patch for 6.1? Not likely.

I know that not all bugs can be fixed. But please, let's at least fix the big ones for the official release.

Dave I

November 7th, 2000 7:02 AM

Please don't blow your IMO only chance to gain back some
market share from IE. If what ... says is even half true,
and I see no reason to doubt him, it will be a major
dissapointment in netscape, and by proxy, in mozilla and
open source software.

Roland Nagtegaal

November 7th, 2000 7:01 AM

Please make Netscape6 standard compliant. If not Netscape, then who?

Edward Yavno

November 7th, 2000 7:01 AM

The last thing you want to do is alienate the opensource community more. IE has overtaken Netscape already in so many ways. If you ignore standards compliance you give Netscape users one less reason to continue to use it and begin to reflect the ugly "adopt and extend" side of IE that remains despite its other standard-compliant benefits.

Paul S. Johnson

November 7th, 2000 7:00 AM

Netscape, please allow standards compliance to be have higher priority than
marketing deadlines. I realize that the deadline slipping that has happened
so far has caused problems, but shipping a non-compliant product won't help.
The best way for Netscape to win, is to ship the best product.

Jim Crumley

November 7th, 2000 6:57 AM

Roland Nagtegaal

November 7th, 2000 6:56 AM

I've always preferred to use Netscape, but the Internet is built on open standards and if they can't provide an environment that supports that it is very difficult to develop for them.

�imh�n McManus

November 7th, 2000 6:54 AM

I agree that Netscape should be fixed. Shame to see the project die like this, because of marketing / business people not having a clue what people want from Netscape.

Roman Sulzhyk

November 7th, 2000 6:50 AM

You guys didn't loose ground to Microsoft because of "unfair competition," you lost because of crap like this.

Get a clue and deliver a solid, quality product, regardless of whether you are in danger of missing some arbitrary deadline.

Tim Hughes

November 7th, 2000 6:49 AM

From a development point of view I think Netscape is just aload of...

**** ******** ****** ***** ******.

<br
excuse my french !!!!

Gary McAllister

November 7th, 2000 6:48 AM

I agree with Mr. Flanagan. Netscape should not distribute a non standard compliant version of its product as it could worsen its reputation (that is already not too good). Netscape must be careful if they don't want developers to abandon Netscape support for future development.

Frederic Bergeron

November 7th, 2000 6:48 AM

Some points to consider:

Programmers respect standards, not necessarily because they think standards are better than proprietary solutions, but because standards offer the best hope that a programmer's work will endure, and offer the programmer the opportunity to avoid specialising in niches.
Programmers lead the adoption of new technology. If programmers give it the thumbs up, then they will start writing for it, then users will start using it, and then you have a chance of establishing an "internet scale" product. If not, it's doomed from the start.
Programmers (web developers especially) are fed up to the teeth with the Web standards non-compliance situation. One of the reasons that so many programmers hate Microsoft is not the purported low quality of their products, but the way that Microsoft increasingly force their own solutions down the throats of the internet programming community.
Of course, as any experienced programmer will point out, there are plenty of unknown non-compliances, probably more than known, and fixing just the known ones now will probably not make much difference with the technical quality of the shipped product -- the others will be discovered pretty quickly. A post-release series of patches is inevitable, so in practical terms what's the difference if a fix is in the release or a patch?
The technology is not the point here. There is now a high risk that the list of known Netscape 6 non-compliances could become a political rallying point for these frustrated programmers -- that is, it could rapidly acquire much more significance than it actually merits technologically. Those journalists have to write something about Netscape 6!
Wherever there is a risk, there is an opportunity. If Netscape were to make the gesture of sacrificing their release schedule for the sake of complying with Web standards, they would instantly win the respect and goodwill of all those frustrated and jaded programmers. Thats an intangible asset that could be worth millions of dollars, amortized over one or two years.

Andrew Bettison

November 7th, 2000 6:46 AM

Some points to consider:

Programmers respect standards, not necessarily because they think standards are better than proprietary solutions, but because standards offer the best hope that a programmer's work will endure, and offer the programmer the opportunity to avoid specialising in niches.
Programmers lead the adoption of new technology. If programmers give it the thumbs up, then they will start writing for it, then users will start using it, and then you have a chance of establishing an "internet scale" product. If not, it's doomed from the start.
Programmers (web developers especially) are fed up to the teeth with the Web standards non-compliance situation. One of the reasons that so many programmers hate Microsoft is not the purported low quality of their products, but the way that Microsoft increasingly force their own solutions down the throats of the internet programming community.
Of course, as any experienced programmer will point out, there are plenty of unknown non-compliances, probably more than known, and fixing just the known ones now will probably not make much difference with the technical quality of the shipped product -- the others will be discovered pretty quickly. A post-release series of patches is inevitable, so in practical terms what's the difference if a fix is in the release or a patch?
The technology is not the point here. There is now a high risk that the list of known Netscape 6 non-compliances could become a political rallying point for these frustrated programmers -- that is, it could rapidly acquire much more significance than it actually merits technologically. Those journalists have to write something about Netscape 6!
Wherever there is a risk, there is an opportunity. If Netscape were to make the gesture of sacrificing their release schedule for the sake of complying with Web standards, they would instantly win the respect and goodwill of all those frustrated and jaded programmers. Thats an intangible asset that could be worth millions of dollars, amortized over one or two years.

Andrew Bettison

November 7th, 2000 6:46 AM

It is truely a sad state of affairs when companies release products that are far from complete. Things have only gotten wose over these last few years, with more and more companies main priority being a release date, instead of a good product.

Up until recently, I had been a strong supporter of Netscape, using their product and developing websites that worked with Netscape. Over the last year, it has become increasingly harder to do so with Netscape's lack of compliance to current standards.

I feel that Netscape has has now lost thier goals. They no longer wish to create a browser that is STABLE and settle for getting one released on an arbitrary date that was most likely writen on a calendar by a high level executive. It does little good to release a product that looks nice and has some good features and a shopping tab, things that are suppose to bring in revenue for the company, when very few people are going to be able to use such a product because it has so many bugs and errors in the code.

Many developers have already stopped trying to create websites that can be seen properly with Netscape. With the new version having just as many problems as previous versions did with reguards to standards compliance, the trend is going to continue to show a stready flow of developers no longer supporting the Netscape product.

One other aspect that might not have crossed your minds is that Netscape is no longer the "only" choice for people and corporations using UNIX. IE is now available for those users and it does not that all the bugs that Netscape has with reguards to fonts being completely dropped, causing all words on a website to not be shown. It does not have the problem of the mail folder becomming unreadable from netscape causing it to crash. It is actually stable. I am sorry I am now just ranting.

Please believe me when I say that people do not care as much as you believe they would if you hold back on the final release date in order to bring out a better product.

Brian J. Summers

November 7th, 2000 6:43 AM

Shipping products with known bugs may be common practice with closed-source software, in fact, Microsoft calls these "features." Open source changes the rules, since there are many people who are familiar with the code, and all bugs are posted for the world to see. This is supposed to make the software better. I really think Netscape should emphasize standards compliance, and apply every available bug fix. Come on, guys!

John Craig

November 7th, 2000 6:43 AM

I'm a web developer who has had to deal with designing pages with DHTML effects that work *well* on both Netscape and IE. While I understand why Netscape wants something it can call "6.0" ASAP, I have a feeling these bugs are really going to hurt them with developers. If the fixes are available, put them in!

Christopher Ishida

November 7th, 2000 6:43 AM

John Craig

November 7th, 2000 6:43 AM

The answer is pretty simple if you want to embrace reality.

"Netscape is proud to make available to the world the Beta1 version of NS6!"

This is where we are currently at. No one will deny this FACT.

Simple and to the point.

Please embrace truth, and let us developers move forward making this a worthy piece of software. We are all very proud of where we are at and where we are going. No reason to hurt the project now by lying to the world and raising everyone's expectations.

The truth can liberate Netscape in this particular case.

--pete

Pete Collins

November 7th, 2000 6:42 AM

Please end the pain and make our lives easier. I quit using Netscape years ago due to bugs and I'd be nice to have a usable choice instead of wasting time on workarounds.

Matt Perkins

November 7th, 2000 6:41 AM

Please! Please! Please! make this standards compliant Netscape!! I have used your browser for years now .. and have hated IE as a result of its lack of standards even though we all know MS does have the resources to get it right.

I understand commercial needs to deliver, but wasn't that the purpose of delivering an OSS version? There are no financial rewards to delivering on a specific date, but there are significant impacts to assuring lost market share as a result of poor delivery. OSS can be slower .. but it is also much more thorough.

Ship a 6.0 we can all be proud of, and watch the market move towards you. Otherwise we will all be affected by the apathy of the general public.

Jason Key

November 7th, 2000 6:40 AM

I simply agree.

Though I understand the temptation to release, this industry is too lax about bugs like this. You can't rely on patches. It takes too long for them to be adopted and they will never do so reliably, as every fresh install from that CD reintroduces the bugs long after they have been patched.

Not all software has bugs and we don't need another browser version and another set of bugs and incompatabilities added to the mix already out there.

The earlier versions of the browsers are fine with vanilla HTML. Until the new standards are properly implemented they are not practical to develop for.

PartialCompliance^4 or PartialCompliance^6 = useless

Cortlandt Winters

November 7th, 2000 6:39 AM

This is Navigator's last good shot at becoming the ubiquitous, standards-compliant browser. There are numerous developers who have been long time fans of Navigator; for some, not giving up on the Netscape platform has been based on anti-MS (and other) sentiments... even though market share and reliability of IE's feature set is undeniably impressive (though not flawless).

However, these same developers are _SCREAMING_ for a standards-compliant browser. Whether or not it comes from Netscape, MS, an independent OSS build,
or fucking Mars (though a phat GPL'd browser would be great) doesn't matter.

Releasing a next-generation browser that isn't compliant with standards (set
forth long ago!) shows that Netscape is not serious about establishing Navigator as a development platform.

Fuck time-to-market. How much longer would the dev community otherwise have to wait for a standards-compliant browser if it isn't done _now_ rather than later?

For the love of god, please realize that the ultimate success of Navigator is dependent on Netscape recognizing it as a platform, not a downloadable goodie that is nothing more than a vehicle for getting instant messenger and netscape.com content/commerce partners in front of eyeballs (how nineties!).

Yong Bakos

November 7th, 2000 6:38 AM

I am so tired of testing for browser versions, and adding advanced "cool" features only for IE users, and excluding Netscape users. I give Netscape users text menus, and IE users onmouseover layered menus.

Please don't release an entirely new browser. At least be fully backwords compatible. Thank you for all the hard work you have done so far. I appreciate the free browser personally, but a buggy browser will make my life much harder.

Robert Zwink

Robert Zwink

November 7th, 2000 6:37 AM

Netscape owes all us developers who have stuck with them through thick and thin (very thin lately) to release a good, standards compliant product.

AJR

November 7th, 2000 6:36 AM

Good, bad, or ugly, ... NS 6.0 WILL set the baseline for browser abilities and compliance for several years to come. It won't matter much if things are fixed in NS 6.1. The dream of developing to standards and running on any compliant browser are DOOMED if NS 6.0 ships with major compliance bugs.

Yes, I want NS 6.0 so bad I can taste it BUT I want the dream not a broken facsimile.

Randall J. Parr, Temporal Arts

November 7th, 2000 6:36 AM

Having read the comments of the 492 people who have preceded me, I can think of nothing original to add. Please goback to the workbench for a few more days or weeks and fix the bugs before release.

Paul Graf

November 7th, 2000 6:36 AM

Netscape owes all us developers who have stuck with them through thick and thin (very thin lately) to release a good, standards compliant product.

AJR

November 7th, 2000 6:35 AM

I agree with this, the most important thing of computing is standard but not time to deliver

Carfield Yim

November 7th, 2000 6:33 AM

I cannot understand what would drive a company to release a web browser that doesn't even conform to the established standards. Not only is this unfair to the customers and users of the software, it puts an unfair burden on web designers to go out of their way to rewrite their standards-compliant code just to allow it to be displayed by a bad web browser.

Andrew Viridis

November 7th, 2000 6:33 AM

Standards compliance will drive industry support.

john dehope

November 7th, 2000 6:33 AM

This is ridiculous. Netscape is one of the founding pieces of software that brought the Internet to its prominence today, and as a developer this is a slap in the face. Let us now embrace the new browser of the future�. MS Internet Explorer

Netscape should take responsibility for their product and fix it before they deploy it!

Marty Spain

November 7th, 2000 6:32 AM

Vince published a note just as I was. When I refer to IE5 being standards based I am refering to the Macintosh version. The MacBU down in California managed to create a wonderful browser. I do forget how much the Windows version irritated the developers!

Brad Siegfreid

November 7th, 2000 6:32 AM

Im a recent Linux convert and have been REALLY looking forward to a standards complient Netscape to use on my system. Guess I will just stick with Galeon. Who needs all the extra crappy marketing buttons on Netscape 6 anyway??? What a shame...

JP Toto

November 7th, 2000 6:31 AM

I don't think that netscape can come back from dead.

Also if I use linux and netscape 4.72, I must admit that MS IE 5 is a better product.

Mozilla, even if it is open source, cannot reach the Micro$oft browser.

I'll pray for a good browser on a linux platform (and don't tell me about strange thing like .net technology port)

Gianluca

November 7th, 2000 6:30 AM

One of 3 things is going on here.
1.> Mr. Flanagan was making a page and was upset when his code didn't work in Netscape because he has been using MS standards so long that he forgot W3C

2.> There is an error in one of Mr. Flanagan's books (JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, Java in a Nutshell, and Java Examples in a Nutshell), and this is a good excuse.

3.> Mr. Flanagan Just got a big check with a windows logo on it.. hmm.. (Wonder if it crashed)

Neither MS or Netscape have a fully complient browser now, in fact neither are close. MS has their own non-standard standard. Most people just assume if IE supports it, it is standard. Netscape 6 (PR3) is the only browser that I have found that supports everything i've thrown at it, standard and MS-Standard.

Now people complaining about all the problems listed on bugzilla, people sit down and be quite, learn something then do something. Complaining doesn't help, now all those who whould be working on those bugs you mentioned may stop to respond to crap like this.

All those Designing 2 pages.. one for IE and One for Netscape... people sit down and be quite, learn to create a crossbrowser page. Not as hard as you would think.

I'm not say'n Netscape is perfect, it has issues. But in my opinion, its the best option so far and its only in Preview release.

Not only does this look bad for Mr. Flanagan but O'Reilly as well.

BTW: I cannot support something like this. when the author appears to have his own issues with Netscape.

I could take up a few more pages but i'll stop here.

Joe W

November 7th, 2000 6:30 AM

I don't know what the problem is. I tried Netscape 6 PR3 and found it really good. It did the things you all said didn't work, I could DL in DD and everything. Are you on PR1 or PR2??? In fact, I am in Netscape 6PR3 right now. No problem.

Nathan

November 7th, 2000 6:29 AM

I can't imagine what Netscape is thinking. It's a very cynical gesture to release a product that is not ready.

b

Bill Spornitz

November 7th, 2000 6:29 AM

I strongly believe that NS6 should be delayed until known important
non compliance bugs are fixed.
It is important to establish credibility in open source development.
Otherwise, it'll be like following in the path of MS, who release
products full of bugs, just to "get it out".

Mauro Talevi

November 7th, 2000 6:28 AM

It is really painfull to see what has happened to Netscape. Once
a beacon of inovation, now a pathetic tool for marktroid people in AOL to use and abuse.
The Browser war was not won by Microsoft but simply lost by blind people at Netscape. It is really sad to see that they did not learn anything from earlier blunders and are prepared to do the greates blunder of them all, the final blow to an already moribund browser, by releasing a crippled non standard compliant browser that will shove netscape to the graveyard of once great companies.

Manuel Eduardo Correia

November 7th, 2000 6:27 AM

It's pretty sad day when a product is released with known problems (bugs), even sadder when known solutions (patches) are not applied!

Gezz Netscape, we expect higher quality of code, and higher adherence to Internet standards from you. This is the kind of crap Microsoft might have tried to pull 5 years ago. Given the cost of shipping bad code, and then trying to fix it, after the hose has left the barn, even they have improved their quality.

We need the choice of a highly compliant, innovative, commercial browser. A Browser that is more functional, more web friendly, faster, smaller and Smarter than the other guy.

It�s the professional thing to do. It�s the completive thing to do. It�s the Right Thing to do.

Ian Irving

November 7th, 2000 6:26 AM

We lost the competition in browser for a long time. It's not only for the browser itself, but for the whole web enabling. I'd rather look at other choices than IE or Netscape.

Yuantai Du

November 7th, 2000 6:26 AM

Brad Siegfreid

November 7th, 2000 6:25 AM

If the Netscape 6 browser is released with all of these bugs it simply won't be adopted. No one in the groups I work with are at all excited about adopting a new browser, especially not in an enterprise environment where deployment consumes huge resources. If the first release is this buggy and this far from standards compliance, you can FORGET about it even being considered for adoption. The first impression is going to make or break the case, and it sounds like NS6 is poised for a hard fall.

Why are these fixes not being permitted, why is the open source resource not being tapped? The release of NS6 is going to publicly showcase what Open Source can do . . . if it falls flat, it will mar the margins of respect that Open Source has been able to gain so far.

Get with the program and do it right the first time! If the patches are there, there is absolutely NO excuse.

I have been trying to use NS6 prerelease on M$ WinX and Linux and I'm sorry to say that it is not worth the effort for the number of times that it simply disappears . . . so, I don't use it, and I don't see why anyone else will . . . I had hoped for so much more from this, but it looks like I'll have to use IE and Konqueror (untried) for my browsing.

Mad, doesn't even begin to cover it.

MadArab

November 7th, 2000 6:25 AM

I use Linux at home. I use Netscape 4.52. It keeps crashing/hangs up. It hangs up most of the time when I use Java applets, therefore I usually disable Java.
It is sad to say, but MSIE is much better than Netscape. I wish Netscape was a competition to MSIE, it doesn't seem to be any more...

Asaf Gery

November 7th, 2000 6:24 AM

The only pains I've ever had with Web development were due to the weaknesses of the Netscape browsers.

As far as I'm concerned the Web development world would be a much better place if Netscape would just "go away", or adhere to the IE "standard". Once again, Microsoft has proven that they may not always be first, but in the long run they will be the best for the developer and the user.

Joe

November 7th, 2000 6:23 AM

As a user, I have steadfastedly refused to switch to IE for quite a long time now, even though there are some sites that simply don't work in NN anymore. However, I kept IE around as a backup for these occasions. More and more, I find myself starting out browsing in NN, and ending up in IE. If I have to switch browsers once, I don't usually switch back.

As a developer, my maxim used to be "Code for NN, and fix it for IE". Somewhere around versions 4, it changed to "Code for NN, it will work in IE". Then it changed to "We HAVE to code for NN, and then add the cool features for IE only." If NN6 isn't ready for prime time, will this change once again to "Code for IE, screw NN"?

Brendan Donovan

November 7th, 2000 6:21 AM

I wish I had time to read all the posts by fellow developers, but the few I have read echo all our opinions. We need a STANDARDS based browser. If its not, then we can't recommend it for our clients. The only thing a partially compliant browser will do is make our jobs more difficult. I've finally had enough. My focus is now on server-side programming as much as possible and testing on IE when I do need DHTML. I might do some testing with NN, but will only deal with problems if its an easy fix. I don't want to be running a half dozen versions of Navigator just to deal with all the little issues, especially with a browser market of about 13%.

Brad Siegfreid

November 7th, 2000 6:20 AM

Netscape 6.0 may not be perfect. But it's more perfect then IE 5.5.
Most of the sheep on here don't realise this, but the problems in Netscape 6.0 are only evident because they're not being hidden. They're there for everyone to see. Microsoft on the otherhand, hides their problems and just releases "service packs" every so often to fix things which you didn't even know where broken. You wouldn't notice these problems with Netscape if it weren't for the fact they're being publicized!

And besides. It's a .0 release. Surely by now we've come to accept that 99% of .0 releases are less than 100% perfect. It's much better then Netscape 4.x, It's more compliant than IE 5.5, and it runs faster, on more platforms, with less crashes.

Whats the problem?

Release early, release often.
96% standards compliant is fine with me, as long as we're pushing closer with ever further release, and we're not waiting too long inbetween those releases.

On another note, standards compliance doesn't mean Microsoft compliant.
So for all you people bitching about having to create two sites, one for Netscape and one for Microsoft, will still have to create two sites.
The difference will be, now you'll be creating one for correctly implemented standards, and one for Microsoft.

My $.02

Vince Stratful

November 7th, 2000 6:18 AM

It would be nice if people would sign a petition after they have actually looked at facts as opposed to one person who's opinion is not balanced at all. Oh well.
You cannot win an argument with an idiot.

Simple

November 7th, 2000 6:18 AM

Three words, "Fix the bugs".

William Campbell

November 7th, 2000 6:18 AM

We've waited this long for Netscape 6.

What is Netscape 6? Netscape is the first complete browser for all platforms.

The new baseline.

Well that's what we wanted.

Take the extra time. Do it right. You're stuffed if you don't.

Capt. Stux *-Jedi

November 7th, 2000 6:18 AM

Capt. Stux *-Jedi

November 7th, 2000 6:16 AM

Microsoft's Internet Explorer has been the faster/better/less-buggy browser on the Windows platform for a great deal of browser history now. Even the Mac users I know are using IE regularly. From what I've seen of the milestone builds and the preview release, Mozilla is still going to have some issues in terms of making headway. If it is to succeed, it should succeed in that area which it has been positioned most clearly: standards compliance.

If Mozilla cannot, through a Netscape release, cannot manage standards compliance to the degree that it should, then developers won't build for it, and all will be for naught. If it's an issue of getting a competitive product out there 'on time', that ship has already sailed. Navigator/Communicator has been trailing for some time now.

If you're going to sic this browser on the world, do it right.

Geoffrey Wiseman

November 7th, 2000 6:15 AM

Agreed. Releasing a quality product should be the Netscape PDTs primary goal. Being based on open source code they already have the patches and it is just plain stupid and ignorant to release a product otherwise. I suggest that the Netscape PDT take this seriously or they will slowly piss off the select group of developers who still use Netscape. Anyway, quality should be the name of the game not mediocrity. After all, would Honda have a good reputation for making reliable cars if their Engineering team said that they new that a car would only start 7 out of every 10 times and still released it to the public anyway?

John

John Cammarata

November 7th, 2000 6:12 AM

Good, informative article. I've been supporting Netscape 6 during the development of our HTML/JSP pages, and I've had to rewrite a few so that they displayed correctly on Netscape 6. Quality is very important to me; if Netscape's management doesn't share the same concerns about quality in their product, then perhaps my efforts are best directed elsewhere.

As noted in Bugzilla, reviewers will scrutinize the first release of shiny, new Netscape 6 after several years, not the patch release several months later. Ship a product you are proud of, not something that is merely passable.

J. Tan

November 7th, 2000 6:12 AM

This is pathetic. I had high hopes for Netscape 6, finally as a big name browser that wouldn't suck.

Instead, we get this.

Oh well, I guess I'll stick to recommending IE to everybody still, no matter what I think of Microsoft, at least their browser works.

Chris Eaton

November 7th, 2000 6:11 AM

You simply cannot continue to allow almost everyone to say "Internet Explorerer is better". This is your chance to prove them wrong, and to provide me with an altenative to IE.

Kevin L. Corridon

November 7th, 2000 6:11 AM

Since the purchase of Netscape by AOL, it's getting from bad to worse.

Version 4.7x were barely useable, so with KDE2 getting out, I won't use
another Netscape products which is a SHAME, unless it is properly
cleaned from bugs.

So put out a clean product or put the code under GPL or disappear from
the browser world.

Yann Forget

November 7th, 2000 6:06 AM

Netscape, you have always been a pathetic company that was unable to hack it in the real world. When you didn't have any competition, you ruled the land, but the second a little competition stepped in, you crumbled, because the reality is your product is terrible.

Microsoft didn't unfairly crush your company, your browser wasn't as good, and definitely not as easy to write code for. The current state of things shows this:

If you can't take the hard work of developers across the globe and turn it into a product in a reasonable timeframe, then you should just drop the whole thing and go back to writing webservers.

To use a little analogy: You are laying on your back trying to aim your gun at your feet, attempting to pierce your ear with a grenade pin, and there is a tank coming towards you. And you are complaining that war is unfair.

BeavisBoy

November 7th, 2000 6:06 AM

I've stuck with Netscape over IE despite it's falling behind in features and standards compliance. I was waiting for Navigator 6 to make up the difference. If even part of the probrlems mentioned are true, I'll likely go with the flow and abandon Netcape for IE (or maybe give Opera another look).
>KFW

KFW

November 7th, 2000 6:06 AM

Netscape has consistently released product code that should have been labeled as beta, beta code that should have been labeled as alpha, and alpha code that was little more than headers. They need to recognize that internet time is not an excuse for sloppy adherence to standards -- both w3c standards and good coding standards.

Charles Meier

November 7th, 2000 6:04 AM

...but the flaws and bugs are not minor. They're glaring. Try using NS6pr3 on Windows98 on a sort-of decent-ish machine to do newsgroups.

Usenet? what an ironic name - the news bit of Netscape6 is UNUSABLE and highly crash-prone. Go on, set up a handful of your favourite newsgroups on it. Then go back and add one or two more. I dare you.

Minor deviations in a 'standard' aren't in an of themselves a disaster - I mean, look at the English Language. Now look at what Americans have done to it! See what I mean? ;-> We all live with that.

Major misinterpretations or distortions are a prob, and so are huge bits of a program that simply don't work reliably or realistically.

Ian Tindale

November 7th, 2000 6:04 AM

one of the goals of the web was to be platform independent for presentation.
If I can code up a page so that all browsers can work, then I've done a good
job. The minute I have to make exceptions in my coding because one (or more)
browsers can't adhere to the published standard, then what's the point of
having standards? Without the standards from the W3 Consortium, where would
the World Wide Web be today? Please, please adhere to the standards published
and fix the outstanding problems within Navigator. It is currently my
browser of choice (as I am cross platform), but other alternatives do exist...

Jerry Heyman

November 7th, 2000 6:02 AM

I agree with David Flanagan. Why release a product with known errors?

//Anders

Anders Johansson

November 7th, 2000 6:02 AM

I am developing web application since 1996 and I was very enthusiasm when I first discover DHTML. Netscape 4 was on a good way and very competitive against Internet Explorer 4. But now, and since the release of IE5, Netscape is far behind and it become very difficult to develop cross-browser web application. I think that Netscape is no longer in the course. Today, developing for both IE and Netscape is a real headache and Netscape is causing a lot of overhead. What we need is browser that respect standards like W3C and this, across platform and browser.

Benjamin Caron

November 7th, 2000 6:01 AM

We do the great things which anyone think but nobody do it.
The support of the open standard is the most import than any schedul.

Roy jiang

November 7th, 2000 6:01 AM

I don't have the strenght to write down exacly what I've experienced whilst trying to work with Netscape Navigator.

Instead I just agree with the most of you.

Nestcape just doesn't do it for me

Sincerly yours.

geek

geek

November 7th, 2000 6:01 AM

I agree with David Flanagan. To me it seems quite stupid to release a product with known errors. By the way why does it have to be so big culdn't one make a smaller browser that simply truncates all nifty animations and other stuff that is in the way when one try to watch pages. Also I think htere should be a switch in the Preferences to disable pictures.

//Anders

Anders Johansson

November 7th, 2000 6:00 AM

Well, nobody I know even uses Netscape anymore. It's just to buggy in the 4.x format. If you are going to release Netscape 6.x with known critical bugs, don't even bother. The only reason I use it now is because I run Linux. I haven't upgraded to KDE 2.0 yet, but the KDE browser sounds like it's the way to go. At first I thought the KDE developers were nuts to reinevent the wheel with a new browser, now they just look like they were some of the few that correctly predicted the future.

Looks like the only hope for Mozilla is the GPL'ing of the code. Developers can then fix the problems and not be bothered with arbitrary marketing decisions.

Adam

November 7th, 2000 6:00 AM

How many millions of development hours have been lost to this continuing hassle of incompatible browsers? Now that the web has become such an important part of peoples lives and businesses, to release yet another browser that doesn't follow the agreed-upon specs is criminal.

I urge the good folks at Netscape to take the relatively small extra period of time that will let them release a product that we'll all love...not another one that we'll loathe.

Chris Spurgeon
Developer
Electronic Ink
www.electronicink.com

Chris Spurgeon

November 7th, 2000 6:00 AM

I think every application has number of known bugs, and Netscape is not an exclusion. And that is good this list is open: who knows what will happen with your web applications in IE "developer platform"?

Ivan Boiko

November 7th, 2000 6:00 AM

It is sad to know that NS6 will come out with the bugs listed in the article, but that shouldn't be taken to mean that the end of the world is close at hand ;-).

Here are a few reasons why:-

Nothing's perfect (the perfect, and rather lame, defense :-).
It will still be more standards compliant than IE5.x (please correct me if I am wrong).
There's always Mozilla. In fact, I'd prefer Mozilla to NS6.
Remember Eric Raymond's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" (I hope I've got the title right)? "Release early, release often"?

I see no reason to hit the panic button over one article.

Harshdeep Jawanda

November 7th, 2000 5:59 AM

Software vendors, at times, need to look beyond the bottom line, deadlines, etc. and strive for a complete, stable product. Netscape 6 as it stands now is definately not even close to ready. This article confirms it. Don't release the product until it's compliant and stable.

Ryan Lubke

November 7th, 2000 5:59 AM

I love my Netscape and therefore I will wait another months or years for my new Netscape.
But I will not accept another buggy or (in this case even worse) a non standard compliant version anymore.

Do I have really to support the "damned" IE just because of Netscape is not able to release a standard compliant browser?
That would be unforgivable!

Reto Schnyder

November 7th, 2000 5:57 AM

How many millionsof development hours have been lost to this continuing hassle of incompatible browsers? Now that the web has become such an important part of peoples lives and businesses, to release yet another browser that doesn't follow the agreed-upon specs is criminal.

I urge the good folks at Netscape to take the relatively small extra period of time that will let them release a product that we'll all love...not another one that we'll loathe.

Chris Spurgeon

Developer

Electronic Ink
www.electronicink.com

Chris Spurgeon

November 7th, 2000 5:57 AM

To the People at Netscape
I have been waiting patiently for a new browser from you. I can wait longer. I will not put up with buggy software. If I don't like it from one company, why should I take it from you? I have had instances where Netscape 4.76 has refused to allow me click on links, fill out forms. The bug reporting applet crashed too. I've tested my pages in 6, and, though I've used the W3C's recommendations, they did not work in your browser. So much for your promotional lines.
FIX the problem. Listen to your developers, LISTEN to your users. Or just throw in the towel.

V.C. David

November 7th, 2000 5:55 AM

Put the Programmers back in charge! We dont want another IE vs MS war, we finally want a browser that supports the W3C standards!

andre anneck

November 7th, 2000 5:54 AM

Put the Programmers back in charge! We dont want another IE vs MS war, we finally want a brother that supports the W3C standards!

andre anneck

November 7th, 2000 5:51 AM

I've been developing web pages since the 1.0 browsers. I've never been able to implement all the goodies, because none of the browsers out completely supported them. It would be nice to do this for once. Fix Netscape6!

Jack Wenger

November 7th, 2000 5:49 AM

Netscape/AOL, come on! I have been waiting patiently for the one and only truly compliant browser and now I hear it will not be as I expected. Your browser sucks if it isn't 100% compliant. If I have to use a browser that is not 100% compliant, then I will choose IE over this pathetic excuse for making me wait so long and then not delivering the goods.

I am 100% in favor of the suggestion made by Mr. Flanagan, get this browser to be 100% compliant, then release it. The positive press will be overwhelming from all circles on the planet and then you can again regain market share. If this browser is some weak sister of IE, then that is how it will be treated.

Please reconsider this insanity that you apparently are willing to perpetrate on the world's internet community. This is your one chance to do the right thing, this moment in time will pass and I believe will end up passing your crappy excuse for another proprietary browser right by.

I am dumbfounded, amazed and disappointed. I have nothing else left to say.

Sincerely,
Michael L. Deane

Michael L. Deane

November 7th, 2000 5:49 AM

Michael L. Deane

November 7th, 2000 5:48 AM

I have tred Netscape 6 PR1 to PR3,the PR3 can't support Chinese very well,If I change the Chinese font and change charset,I will can't see any english or Chinese.Netscape 6 is astable yet,and very slow.Maybe Netscape 4.x is better than Netscape 6...:(

ID5

November 7th, 2000 5:48 AM

The war is not lost indeed. Do not forget that the war will not be fought on th e pc, the battleground will be the WAP device. The PC is dead long live the PC. (for makin the revolutione..)

hansley

November 7th, 2000 5:48 AM

I think it is funny that this form probably supports more tags then Netscape 6 ;)

Seriously, I think netscape needs to stop trying to be "commercial" and build a browser that WORKS. it crashed me out over 20 times the night I installed it. Listen to the people who use your product - FIX IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AND, DO IT RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I would like to stop designing two different web sites for my company, because your stupid, useless browser doesn't except outdated markup...it is there, it makes the site look good and the usability wonderful - PUT IT IN YOUR BROWSER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

shawn parker

November 7th, 2000 5:47 AM

If you look at bugzilla, and list new/assigned/open bugs for the last 5 days you get approx 1200 faults at various levels of severity.

As I understand it, the effort is going into fixing faults that impact stability of the software, instead of features.

Because NS 6 is largely written in javascript, then ANY modification to the JS language system is going to impact on the behaviour of the product -- which must at this point contain workarounds.

The reason I believe they are going for a release at this point in time has to do more with maintaining the public image of the product, and the Netscape web site. If they fail to do this, then ultimately the entire project will be nuked.

Software release is a balancing act. But if you fail to release at all, then you will crop off the edge. Netscape need to make a release badly at this point and if smaller bugs are all you can see, then fine, we can all live with them for the moment.

I am writing on a linux box. IE does not exist on this, so I am quite stuffed witout Netscape/Mozilla.

Mozilla 1.0 is not due until 2Q2001 - a wait that long is not sustainable for Netscape. The branch from which Netscape is built will be 0.9 -- so there is a way to go yet.

This is why I /cannot/ support this petition. It ignores reality of the situation.

Finally NS6 will see the roll out of Java 2 on browsers. That ought to be another improvement for the world.

Neil Corlett

November 7th, 2000 5:45 AM

I understand that churning out a product is the driving force behind your development, but what good is supporting an Open Source development strategy, and then totally ignoring the fruits of its labour?

Releasing a non-standards compliant browser, especially in spite of fixes that exist to fix most of those problems, is not going to garner support for Netscape.

Do yourselves a favour and accept the patches being given to you by experienced coders.

Scott Seager

November 7th, 2000 5:43 AM

I am sorry, but somewhere between the release of Netscape 4.5 and Netscape's aquisition by AOL, I lost all hope for Netscape as a company. I hope to high heaven that they would fix up their browser. However, the Mozilla project stated its goals as being the best, most standards compliant browser around. If these accusations of DOM/CSS/etc. incompatibilities with the OPEN standards (not those dictated by anyone but the W3C) are true, then they have failed. Mozilla, wake up, apply real patches, and tell Netscape if they want to screw themselves, they are welcome, but that you will patch the tree anyway!

Trever Adams

November 7th, 2000 5:42 AM

This is what is really going on (this is from personal experience).

Programmer : Boss I want to make this part of the program run better.

Boss : Why? It runs now

Programmer : but It doesn't work right

boss : so? it runs now

Programmer : but It needs to be fixed

boss : no it doesn't it runs now

The problem is they put these people in charge who have no computer skills what so ever, and have this idea that programmers are perfect. Some of these people don't even think testing is nessicary. Netscape needs to put somone in charge That has been a programmer before, and not some neaderthall that went to college, joined a frat, drank his way through college cheating off of other people, and then came into the "real" world and got a job because he was in the same frat as the person recruiting for the company. But why do A silly thing like hiring a qualified person when a perfectly good idiot is available.

Matt Poepping

November 7th, 2000 5:41 AM

Netscape is playing catchup, and can only succeed with full standards compliance. Rushing to market will be a false economy: people have watched and waited a long time for this product, and will only turn their backs on it if it is not what it was promised to be.

Steve

Steve Tinney

November 7th, 2000 5:39 AM

Hey. Do it right or don't do it at all.

Dan Schaaf

November 7th, 2000 5:39 AM

I want to have a browser which is:

Cross-platform</li>
Standards compliant</li>

Netscape has always been good on the former and weak on the latter; please sort it out - if Windows users are to be persuaded away from IE, they won't be swayed by the former, so address the latter. Some of the faults are too significant to be just ignored, even if "for later".

George Buchanan

November 7th, 2000 5:39 AM

I want to have a browser which is:

Cross-platform</li>
Standards compliant</li>

George Buchanan

November 7th, 2000 5:37 AM

Glad to hear someone standing up for the HTML/CSS/DOM standards.
The standards are what binds the web together and the only way the
best viewed in Netscape/IE tags all over the net will disappear.

Jonathan Grimm

November 7th, 2000 5:35 AM

The path for remaining a viable contender in the Browser Wars has been made clear and that path is Standards Compliance. I for one am tired of having to develop every website twice just to support the various niggling little bugs that exist in IE and Netscape. I had all but given up hope of supporting Netscape in 90% of the pages I develop, now all hope is lost.

Chris Crockett

November 7th, 2000 5:34 AM

Netscape ExCommunicator would be a more correct name for this lousy product since by using it you are put to shame by the rest of the Internet community.

The only thing you ever need to know about Netscape 6.0 is what the friggin� userAgent-string contains so that you can completely block it out of your web sites. Quite frankly, it sux major elephant balls as always with Netscape browsers.

Just say No!

Fredrik Wangel

November 7th, 2000 5:33 AM

Netscape's last best chance for not being relegated to the "Remember when people used to use Mosaic?" bin is to provide absolute, 100%, standards compliance. It is clear to me, as a web designer and developer, that since the AOL buyout of Netscape, that the primnary focus has been on how to use the browser as a marketing tool rather than how to make Mozilla/Netscape 6 a clearly better browser...AOL/Netscape's version numbering fiasco (I guess they forgot the number 5?) is a clear indicator of this, maybe they think that people will think a higher number makes it a better browser?

Pete Ruckelshaus

November 7th, 2000 5:33 AM

Get it right! - I can wait!

I don't want the waters polluted with more legacy tedium.

Okay, how about a new 'standard': Prename 6.0 to 6.-99 - as in six point minus ninety nine! That should be about enough, I reckon?

Ian Tindale

November 7th, 2000 5:32 AM

Come on Netscape ! This is your *VERY LAST* chance to produce a working browser.
IF NS6 is as bad as NS47.latest, then NO ONE will use it, and you'll lose.

Let the fixes in, or you'll be rolling out NS6.1 faster than you can see 'service pack'...

Thomas Chiverton

November 7th, 2000 5:31 AM

What's the hurry? Netscape already lost the race a year ago , and with it the first round of the PR battle. The only recovery would be to release something so kickass that the press would trumpet it like a new Messiah. Instead, Netscape will take another, near fatal beating when they release a bugged-out version. The story the reporters will run will be generally titled "Too Little, Too Late" and give as much press to this grassroots, standards compliance issue as they will attention to the new "features" in the browser

Brian Runk

November 7th, 2000 5:31 AM

C'mon guys. Pull the fixes in and put out a good product. I've never used IE, and I don't want to, and I'm depending on you guys to prove that the Mozilla open source model actually works. Take a couple months and get it right.

Michael Wanggaard

November 7th, 2000 5:31 AM

I'm wondering why everyone is speaking about a browser war...
If you release navigator 6 with such incompatibilities, the war is over !

Cedric Marcone

November 7th, 2000 5:30 AM

IE5 is not fully compliant, yet its more compliant than any Netscape browser to date. The gecko engine is coming along nicely. I can't wait for someone to implement it CORRECTLY. Push the release back if it means becoming THAT much compliant.

Lance England

November 7th, 2000 5:26 AM

I think this is Netscape's last chance to repair its browser's reputation for rendering bugs and instability. Netscape is not in a position where it can just expect web developers to work around a new set of bugs (not that it should do this, anyway).

Ben Hutchings

November 7th, 2000 5:25 AM

Netscape is making a suicide with this..they already lost many many users with delays and ignoring standards. Personaly, I used to work with Netscape only, but I was forced to use IE, since it doesn't crash every 10 seconds and it's a bit faster. True, N6 beta is faster and I liked it, but it still has (too) many bugs..some thing that worked in 4.74 don't work in NS6. Netscape, snap out of it and start coding again and get rid of those coders that can't code right. As a profesiional web developer, I sometimes spend like an hour or 2 just to fix some stupid widths and heights problems, not to even mention frames. Shame on you, NS,

Marko

November 7th, 2000 5:21 AM

I've been using Netscape's browsers since the Netscape 0.9 release. Initially I used Netscape's browsers because they supported more features than Mosaic. Then I used Netscape's browsers because they were platform-independent. Finally I used Netscape's browsers because they were the only graphical browser available for Linux. But all that has changed.

For years, Netscape has built their reputation on defining the cutting edge of web technology, but that hasn't been true for over 2 years. So Netscape needs to do the next best thing: follow the standards, even if they aren't defining them.

It has become apparent that Netscape has forgotten the release-early, release-often nature of open source software development (though once upon a time they practiced it). None of these issues would BE issues if they were fixed, and if the fix is there, apply it, test it, and ship it.

W. Craig Trader

November 7th, 2000 5:18 AM

netscape is a lost cause, ive used it for many years and
tried to stand by it even with the popularity of ie. but
ie really is better now, and netscape isnt catching up.
its unfortunate. id like to use it, but im forced not too
because of the lack of compliance with standards that ie
complies with.

mike spenard

November 7th, 2000 5:18 AM

I'm fed up with hearing that Netscape is so buggy that everybody should abandon it in favour of IE5. I'm always replying that NN6 is on its way and is 100% standard compliant.
Whatam i going to say if it's as buggy as NN4?
AR (France)

Arnaud R�veillon

November 7th, 2000 5:17 AM

Software laws per market

Netscape's lack of integerating standard's and Microsoft's mastery of bullying new ones is the issue that has created this mess. Netscape was the better browser, now IE is just the browser we are left to use.Why not have the organizations that are responsible for creating, protecting, and distribution of what the standards are in the web browser market join forces with more powerful agencies. This formation can create a watchdog agency that approves what web technology complies with standards acceptable to the current available standards and markets. This will stop Microsoft from recreating its own standards that have made surfing hell for us Mac users. It will also stop Netscape from releasing products that created the frustration within this forum.

It's a start, not a full solution. Imagine if every electrical appliance company had its own way of deciding standards. We would have to go to therapy every time we reached for the outlet. Why treat the technology that combines each of us any differently?
nn@futurelab.se

Nelson Neville

November 7th, 2000 5:13 AM

Standards would be pointless if the top two browsers failed to implement them. If IE's DOM was 100% compliant, and Netscape's wasn't, it would be a Microsoft standard, not a universal standard. They call standards so for a reason.

Michael P. Lang

November 7th, 2000 5:12 AM

I grew up on Netscape, even with them releasing browsers that made things a headache to develop for I still stood by Netscape. But this is getting forking ridiculous, I thought the whole promise of Netscape 6 was compliance with standards.. I heard this and I jumped for joy. But now reading this article, I wonder if Netscape is trying to lose all of its user/support base.. If they are they are doing a mighty damn good job.. Get your crap together would ya..!

Jeremy Dorfschmidt

November 7th, 2000 5:12 AM

Unbelievable. As if it weren't a pain in the ass enough to have to accomodate the already buggy and very non-compliant netscape browser. I'm a web developer and this is going to cause some major headaches. Particularly with the css implementation. This is ironicly one area that I wish Microsoft had a monopoly. Pretty much the only people who are using netscape now anyways are mac users and people who never upgrade and don't have a clue how to.

Jeremy

November 7th, 2000 5:11 AM

If you don't like it, dammit, GO FORK.

Mozilla's even GPL'ing this thing to suit forkers of any kind.

Stefan Rieken

November 7th, 2000 5:06 AM

I have a headache already.

Mark Howells

November 7th, 2000 5:04 AM

For development we only support IE thanks to a few unresolved Netscape bugs. If you would like version 6 on my desktop and not my trash can then get it right. You'll only get one more chance from me. If what you release sucks don't expect me to look again. I would rather wait for something that works and works well.

David Cox

November 7th, 2000 5:03 AM

Standards are one thing, at least the proprietry standards used by some web browsers are documented by the companies that build them. Bugs however don't tend to get documented, they do tend to pop up when site builders least expect them. Web developers are unfortunately too busy to support buggy browsers. If Netscape 6 isn't up to scratch, no-one will bother supporting it.

Personally I've been waiting perhaps 2 years for the standards compliant, bugfree Netscape. Surely we can all afford to wait a little bit longer!

Cameron Hart

November 7th, 2000 5:02 AM

Cameron Hart

November 7th, 2000 5:00 AM

Netscape has been my browser of choice for quite a while now - perhaps out of habit, and perhaps because I switch between Unix/Linux and Windows frequently. However, this comment on the Slashdot front page really demonstrated to me just how bad things are:

"IE not only has won the browser wars, it's clearly a better browser - and will remain so."

That is just frightening, yet it made me consider switching to IE for a bit. The most die-hard fans will be lost if Netscape is not as compliant as it can be (even if 100% is impossible) and if 6.0 gets press like this! Mind you, it will as long as there are intelligent people who monitor how browsers do - and when sites like this are linked to the most devoted Netscape users, you'll find that you have major problems.

Here at MIT, I've heard many complaints of people who use our Linux-based Athena network and who find that Netscape has errors or crashes frequently. It's the only browser available for them to use, and so they complain. They shouldn't have to, because Netscape should work. Even beyond that, however, a failure on Netscape's part will have far-reaching consequences. It's the only "major" browser available on Unix/Linux, and if it goes down, then there's no telling what will happen to those OS's. It's time to take a good look at the situation, from a distanced, carefully considered perspective, and realize that the proposed release of Netscape is so bad, in so many ways (including marketing and press) that it must be stopped, for your own good.

Daniel Zaharopol

November 7th, 2000 4:59 AM

If Netscapes browser doesn't work as promised when Mozilla project started I think that IE is way to go in the future. It's shame that Microsoft is more standards compliant than Netscape.

Veli-Pekka Kestil�

November 7th, 2000 4:59 AM

I agree with David's thoughts: Netscape 6's shipping schedule
is entirely shot. We need an even-later but compliant browser more
than we need a month-earlier, broken browser. Netscape Navigator
is still important, and important enought to get right.

Chris Tyler

November 7th, 2000 4:57 AM

Please get it right. Be remembered for producing the first standards compliant browser. I'm a web developer and I've got a sackful of non-compliant browsers, I won't be needing another.

Mark Stockley

November 7th, 2000 4:54 AM

Well I hope they do release 6.0 and not as beta, the reason....people will final get fed up with the crap that Netscape has been trying to push for the last year and this might just put the nail in the N of Netscape. I am sick of developing websites to meet netscapes compliances and not W3C standards. I have been a fan of Netscape from day 1 but since these new breed of netcrape browsers began to appear I have no choice but to support IE and I must say I am very pleased with the quality of that browser (IE). I think netscape should pack up there bags and go home they are cooked, maybe they should be listed on the www.f**kedcompany.com website :)

John Atkins

November 7th, 2000 4:49 AM

I am a web developer and I used to love Netscape. When IE 4.0 was released, this changed. Since the release of IE 4.0, Netscape has been a distant second in the browser market for people doing complex java/javascript browser interfaces. We have had many features blatantly not work on Netscape browsers that should work if they followed the standards more closely. I am very excited that the new Netscape browser will put a stop to this, but if these allegations are true, then Microsoft will have basically put a nail in Netscape. Web developers are not willing to wait another year or two for better versions, as we have timelines to stick to as well. We'll just recommend our browser of choice (IE) and get our paycheck.

Steve Winer

November 7th, 2000 4:49 AM

The last thing we need is another non-complient browser. It's bad enough a lot of developers are developing 2 sites, one for Mac, one for Windows. Sometimes more, making the sites browser and platform specific. This would only make that much more work for them.
Personally, I just redirect all Netscape users to a page that tells them to get a different browser, and I'll continue doing so until Netscape works as it should.

Cameron Hanover

November 7th, 2000 4:48 AM

Well, you can forget your impassioned pleas to Netscape. The arguments are clear, I grant you: the product is so close to perfect, the alternatives are frightening, and it would be the last straw for many diehard Netscape fans. But face it:

YOU ARE TALKING TO THE SUITS NOW

And, quite frankly, they don't give a fuck.

Barry de la Rosa

November 7th, 2000 4:47 AM

PLEASE Fix the bugs before you release this! Straying from open standards will only continue to hinder the ideal of everyone enjoying the web to it's fullest capability.

Greg Huber

November 7th, 2000 4:45 AM

As a web developer, Netscape never fails to amaze me. No two versions of Netscape render a page the same, and apparently Netscape 6 isn't going to fix this. Now I'm going to have to make all my sites work with Netscape 4.x, Netscape 6.x, and IE 4/5. Has anyone at Netscape actually tried making a DHTML site using the DOM in Netscape 6 yet? Based on what I've seen, I think not.

I used to be a huge Netscape fan, but I gave that up a few years ago when it became clear that Netscape didn't want to compete.

Come on guys, get with it.

Robert Roland

November 7th, 2000 4:44 AM

Somehow I find it ironic that as I write this, I see 404 people have signed the petition before me.

Bit I digress. You're right; it is better that Netscape get the standards right the first time than to release a browser with only partial support for them. This is particularly crucial when already Mozilla is arguably IE5.5's equal; this could push it over the top once and for all.

Or, to put it another way, I'd rather be right than happy. Netscape, the fixes are there; take the time to get it right, and be done with it. In the end, it will be better for everyone, including you.

Beecher Greenman

November 7th, 2000 4:37 AM

YOU ARE TALKING TO THE SUITS NOW

And, quite frankly, they don't give a fuck.

Barry de la Rosa

November 7th, 2000 4:37 AM

Here's another plea that you hold release of NS6 until it complies with standards, esp. for known problems for which there are known fixes.

Richard A. Wells

November 7th, 2000 4:36 AM

Mr. Flanagan, you are irresponsible, not to mention unrealistic and inaccurate. First, ALL SOFTWARE HAS BUGS, no matter what the PR people say. To those of you who thought that you would have a perfect browser, I'm not sure what kind of reality pill you need, but you sure need one. Second, and this is like the first point, if you wait until you have COMPLETE standards compliance, you will be waiting TOO LONG. There is nothing wrong with releasing a browser that is 95% compliant, because it kicks the tail off of anything else out there. Third, why are you complaining now, instead of earlier on, when you could have made a difference, Mr. Flannagan? Because you're not someone who cares -- you are a vulture, a PR prostitute who seeks out situations to exploit to get his name in the papers (all metaphorically speaking since this is the Net). That's where the irresponsibility comes in. The only reason you even get to SEE what bugs there are is because the development interface is transparent. If IE or Opera released a version, we'd all just have to deal with it -- no voice, no choice. But I don't see you trampling Red Hat or Suse or anyone else. Are they just not high-profile enough? That's hard to believe. Isn't this more ignornace masquarading as journalism? Isn't this just more ignorance masquarading as technical knowledge? Four, why do you think Netscape HAS a cut-off date? Because they want to ship a browser! Hello, every company will have a drop-dead date for a particular release, and you act as though this is some crime against humanity, that bug XYZ is not fixed by this release. Don't you know ANYTHING about software release schedules? Don't you know ANYTHING about the conflicts between PR and developers, much less the tech writers who end up having to document it all? No, you DON'T. This is obvious from your doomsday petition (a petition? when you could simply have participated?). But I suppose remaining on the outside to scare up media attention, and to make mountains out of molehills is your trade in hucksterism. Five, the bugs that you mention are not show-stoppers by any means. That's the irresponsibility again. Is it important that table cells be padded properly? Yes, but it's certainly not on the level of "crash on bootup" bugs, which have all been taken care of. Your role as a journalist is to be accurate, but these bugs aren't petition-worthy. There is no real reason why this should prevent the release of a 95% standards-compliant browser. People who live in the real world, Mr. Flanagan, know that there is a difference between goals and implementation. You don't get to be a great boxer in one year, or a great bicyclist, or a great writer. You go through process improvement and development cycles all your own, and even if you're not fully trained, you've got to get out there and fight, cycle, or write. It's the same thing for NS. Instead of swooping down from your judgement seat to peck their eyes out, you should be cheering them on. But the saddest thing of all, is that despite how much people complain about IE, the lack of willingness to support a better competitor shows how addicted people are to the shine and the glitter that Microsoft and its worldview offer people -- a comfortable grave where you don't have to make decisions, and standards requirements don't matter. Slam NS for not being perfect, but by the same logic, you'll have to crucify IE, because they don't EVEN try and have stated that standards compliance is not their goal. Seven, I really have to wonder about O'Reilly's technical prowess, if this kind of malformed, uniformed journalism gets through the gates -- how accurate are your books? All things considered, bad move guys, and the effort will only backfire...

Mike Tulloch

November 7th, 2000 4:36 AM

Mike Tulloch

November 7th, 2000 4:34 AM

I am completely amazed but what some people are saying here.

I would appear that people are "fed up" with having to write two versions of their web pages. And they want to only write one that works on IE. Now they seem to think that a non 100% compliant Netscape6 will mean extra work for them.

But HELLO, a 100% complant Netscape 6 will mean extra work too. I am really starting to wonder if some people out there think that 100% compliant means IE compatible. If so then wake up! IE 5.5 is far from 100% compliant. So netscape 6 100% compliant or not will most likely require a different web page to be written than an IE one, but I'm sure you'll just blame this on Netscape too.

I think a lot of people out there really need to start doing some research into what 100% standards compliance means and how both IE5.5 and Netscape6/Mozilla fare up. I think you'll be surprised and perhaps may even learn something

Alex Stansfield

November 7th, 2000 4:34 AM

I stopped making pages for netscape a few years ago only due to the fact that netscape have had serious compability-problems with widely used tags that ie-users have gotten used to ever since the 4-browser. It's just a pain to design something for a netscape-browser, to fiddle around with clearpixels and stuff just cause the freakin program cant calculate correctly. I took a glance at ns6beta when a friend used it and i was happy to see that it finally could calculate frames, but that doesnt really matter when its inferior at so many other aspects.........

Johan Gustavsson

November 7th, 2000 4:32 AM

OK, I agree for drunk cups

Snortagg

November 7th, 2000 4:31 AM

We had such high hopes for Netscape 6 after struggling with Navigator 4.x's horrible incompatibilities for so long. And the verdict is.... It's a bit better (but not much).

The bottom line is that IE now rules the roost and will continue to do so for a long time to come, based on what we've seen of Netscape 6 so far. Unless there's some radical changes in priorities within Netscape, I fear that this is the start of the end for their browser business. Shame.

Steve Ford

November 7th, 2000 4:31 AM

I fully agree with David. Netscape 6.0 Must go out complient with the standards!

As a web developer and one who has chosen to use Linux over Windows at home and work (where possible), the bigest problem I run across is that Netscape crashes, doesn't handle Javascript well and has other small, but annoying glitches on rendering html.

I'll give the Internet Explorer team credit for one thing. It may have took them 2 years to work out alot of the kinks, but they did and it looks real good at this point.

My hope was that after 2 years the Netscape team could have done at least as well.

Joe Croft

November 7th, 2000 4:31 AM

Will Mozilla also be influenced by the Netscape actions, or is the source of Mozilla open so that developers can submit patches and fix the bugs?

If Netscape can stop bugs from being fixed also in the Mozilla then this is a big step back for the project, and at the same time, a warning for future open-source projects; avoid all corporate interference.

I think this will make or break Netscape as a browser. If they're serious about the browser-platform they *have* to release a product of high quality or IE will dominate Windowsusers completly. Linux users will get a mediocre, bugridden upgrade to the allready bloated 4.x-serie of Communicators. Of course, if Mozilla is independant of Netscape we got no problem, but ... somebody clarify, please.

Thomas Weholt

November 7th, 2000 4:29 AM

The quality of Netscape 6 is critical to its success.

If the well-known and understood problems remain, Netscape 6 will
have a very poor uptake. Netscape should consider it their priority
to meet standards. Only then should they put a high priority on
pushing web technology to new limits.

The way I see it, two things will happen:

People will develop/use IE instead.
Netscape 6 will be surpassed by Mozilla due to the the rapid
turn-around of its open source development model.

As a software engineer who does a lot of web develpoment, I find it
deeply frustrating when a browser fails to implement basic features
correctly.
The costs that Netscape may be saving by not meeting standards now
will be multiplied many times over across the world as
developers attempt to work around the browser's weaknesses.

Let's draw an analogy: when a rail company lays down tracks,
it has to meet fundamental quality standards or otherwise, trains will
be very unsafe and/or derail. The passengers pay when their trains have
to go slowly to avoid derailing.

A huge amount of work has already gone in to this product - don't
screw it up now. Please do something and sort this out!

Robert Snell

November 7th, 2000 4:27 AM

Please don't do this to us Netscape!

Todd Bossler

November 7th, 2000 4:26 AM

Actually the only alternative to make serious web development is IE, and this situation can block linux as an alternative solution in the desktop. Please take your time and put in the market a bug-free, standards compliant Netscape 6

Bruno A. Crespo

November 7th, 2000 4:26 AM

It is time that all developers did something, so the standards will be followed, and users of both browsers will get the same results, faster and more efficient!

kim johannesen

November 7th, 2000 4:25 AM

Come on Mozilla. Go for quality. Listen to your expirenced engineers.
Include the standards fixes.

Jack Landers

November 7th, 2000 4:25 AM

I agree. Don't send a product out that's only half-baked. Stick it back in the oven till it's ready.

Kirk Lawson
Information Technology Administrator
Heapy Engineering

Kirk Lawson

November 7th, 2000 4:21 AM

Standards compliance and correction of such obviously trivial issues is a definite must for any product release!

Jeff Lawson

November 7th, 2000 4:20 AM

I strongly agree with Davd Flanagan. I don ot want to relive the update chaos that Netscape 4 has given the developer community.

So I beg Netscape to relly release a product that lives up to it's promesis.

So it can be the first true browser that supports the standards it has been told to support.

To get back on the track to become the biggest browser Netscape need to release an almost perfect product.

Mattias Hedman

November 7th, 2000 4:19 AM

OK, here's the simple reality.

I am a web developer. I - like many others - am sick and tired of having to concurrently develop for two platforms. While I am leery of giving control of the web over to Microsoft, I simply refuse to continue devloping everything twice. We've already created projects that (at the client's request) work only on Internet Explorer. If Netscape 6 continues to be non-standards compliant, we will simply drop it as a target browser.

If browser makers refuse to comply to standards, that's their problem. I find it outrageous that browser developers expect us to pick up the slack for them. Our company will no longer do so, and I hope that other developers will follow suit. I suspect they will. If that means that Microsoft winds up owning the web, then so be it. I'm sick of having to clean up someone else's mess.

Israel Alvarez

November 7th, 2000 4:19 AM

The promise of Netscape 6 has always been that of a standards-compliant browser. More than anything else, this is what I'd like to see in a browser, and what would set it apart from it's competition.

Avdi Grimm

November 7th, 2000 4:18 AM

It's sad to see that what was once such a vibrant company, has slipped into the marketing void. Netscape 6 needs to be truly exceptional if it is to turn around the mass exodus to IE. Netscape 4.7 is an appalling product by today's standards. Even when it came out, version 4 was pretty uninspiring. They need to cut out the marketing droids and concentrate on making a good product if they are to succeed.

Bryan Feeney

November 7th, 2000 4:13 AM

Oops... hit the 'submit' instead of 'preview'... I meant to say 'separate structure from PRESENTATION in the previous comment.

Chuck Johnson

November 7th, 2000 4:13 AM

There are enough broken and buggy Netscapes already. Releasing NS6 now, with all the bugs, is only going to add another one to that list, and further kill your reputation. You should have learned something by now: never release before your product is finished. Too many companies do that and it only results in bad software and a bad reputation. I thought the idea of NS6 was standards compliance?

Lourens Veen

November 7th, 2000 4:09 AM

I use Mozilla every day for general browsing and site development, upgrading to the latest nightly build every few days. It's the best browser available, but still not ready for an official release. It's too slow and has too many quirks in addition to important standards compliance issues, one of the most important being, in my opinion, the inability to disable CSS. Having the option of disregarding the author's presentation suggestions is one of the main reasons for separating structure from content in the first place.

Chuck Johnson

November 7th, 2000 4:07 AM

Addendum to my previous entry:

The real problem is that a vast majority of users has given up Netscape until their next generation browser ships and are using IE at the moment.
Netscape has only one chance: Get it right the first time.

Even considering shipping a product with critical features like LiveConnect missing speaks for itself.
If a large group of users adopts Netscape 6.00, the developers are again stuck with workarounds. Judging the description of say the link modification bug, there isn't always a workaround.

The main reason to develop for Netscape 6 (as opposed to ignore it) should be not to have to do workarounds workarounds and more workarounds for browser bugs and non compliance.

Even if I as a developer am free to use Mozilla, Konqueror, Galeon or Opera that will not help me if my target audience uses Netscape 6.00 with bugs.

Sven Neuhaus

November 7th, 2000 4:05 AM

This article is basically complaining that Netscape 6 is not 96%
compliant instead of the 95% compliant that it currently is. Even if
Netscape engineers fixed the specific bugs that this joker picked
out of the woodwork, there would still be areas that Netscape 6
would not be compliant.

I agree that people should examine this from the correct perspective,
HOWEVER I also believe that Netscape folks should fix the most annoying
bugs before they release Netscape 6.

If it have to fail, at least fail gracefully.

Nelson Ferraz

Nelson Ferraz

November 7th, 2000 4:03 AM

What's the use of having yet another browser that is almost standard-compliant? We were all promised that NS6 would be the first one, the browser we all wanted. In other words: Netscape, put your money where your mouth is!

Ruairi Conor Mc Comb

November 7th, 2000 4:02 AM

I work at an e-commerce company. I'm the only person (literally) in development or html that uses Netscape. Everytime I bring it up due to someone pushing some code out that works fine in IE but not Netscape, everybody whines and bitches that nothing works in Netscape.

I was hoping this would finally get fixed (as well as the speed issues drawing complicated pages) with Netscape 6 and perhaps Netscape would regain market share against IE. Alas, if this is released with these kinds of bugs, everyone I work with is simply going to retort "I told you so" and never even give it a second glance.

Fix the bugs! I'd rather wait!

Cott Lang

November 7th, 2000 4:00 AM

Bye bye Netscape

...sad but true.

Florian Helmberger

November 7th, 2000 3:57 AM

I agree with many points. I have always been of the opinion that "if it doesn't live up to the standards try not to use it". I wrote an e-mail program a while ago. It conformed perfectly to the RFC standards. However, Outlook breaks many of them. People complained to me that some mails did not display correctly! If everyone sticks to standards pedantically (my fav gcc flag) people who write non-standard crap would be forced out of the market.

Just keep patching Mozilla. Release Netscape 6 to the Widows users, if it crashes they'll just think it's windows playing up again. Real users use Mozilla, although it would be nice if they cleaned all the crap out of it. I'm using Konquereor at home and Netscape at works 'cos it supports SOCKS proxies. Now that's something Mozilla is missing.

Jamie Dainton

November 7th, 2000 3:56 AM

Please don't rush to release NS6!

If we have waited for several years we can wait a few months more. If a buggy browser is released now it will be very bad for netscape.

Mattias Nyrell

November 7th, 2000 3:55 AM

Having developed on both Netscape and IE, IE's model is the way forward. If Netscape does not comply to the level of IE 4.01 in any respect it is dead in the water. Ideally it should do what IE 5 does, and then worry about bells and whistles. Without that I would never ever recommend it, since whats the point in a browser thats not compatible with most of the web? MS did an execellent job in compatibility when they were playing catch up, now its Netscapes turn.

Alex Powell

November 7th, 2000 3:54 AM

If the facts are correct I agree with the conclusion.

Dirk van Deun

November 7th, 2000 3:53 AM

Well, thats a turn-around...

From 5 years ago, when Netscape was the killer app, and IE was a small slow piece of software, to now, where the roles have reversed.

This seems to be a symptom of Netscape (the company) bloating out of all proportion, and losing sight of what it was they were created to do...

A sad day for competition

Tim Yates

Tim Yates

November 7th, 2000 3:52 AM

The only important part of Netscape 6 is the Gecko rendering engine. Please get it right first time.

What is the point of a code freeze if you refuse to fix exisitng bugs in the features you choose to include?

Peter Setchell

November 7th, 2000 3:50 AM

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Netscape... We can wait a month or two. That won't hurt your reputation the way another crap product release will!!!

Toby

November 7th, 2000 3:47 AM

I hope that the Mozilla team will fix these bugs. It would be a shame
if they didn't.

Nelson Ferraz

November 7th, 2000 3:45 AM

I think this petition is peevish, petty and counter-productive.
I mean, Mr. Flanagan is whining about cramming more DOM/CSS fixes into the most standard-compliant browser available, and delaying a release even more.
There are far more critical features that are delayed so that Netscape can finally ship a public release.
For example, I've accepted that Netscape won't add bidi language support until the post 6.0 releases (and I'd wish they'd branch already, so the bidi stuff can finally enter the main tree and the nightly builds). For me that feature is far more critical than fiddly DOM/CSS trivia.
Most of the pages I read still use HTML 3.2 + a little CSS, but they are in Hebrew, and that's the biggest reason I'm using IE currently.
Netscape has to ship a product, so that Mozilla will be a development based on their *current* browser, not some Sci-Fi future development.
Get that sucker out the door, and open the bloody tree.

PS: I mean, what on earth are TL elements anyway? This is critical? This is browser-delaying? Get real.

Dotan Dimet

November 7th, 2000 3:40 AM

Simply put:
If Netscape 6 is not nearly perfect in regards to standards compliance, it will never gain back market share. No bells and whistles added will change that.

I use M18 as my default browser and love it, but it still has a ways to go. It is quite acceptable to let the ship date slide as long as visible progress is being made. Not accepting simple and/or important fixes to known bugs is NOT progress.

Glenn Strauss

November 7th, 2000 3:28 AM

As a web developer I ask that you embrace the open standards. It makes for a better web experience.

Dominic Winsor

November 7th, 2000 3:18 AM

Netscape 6 is in a deep code freeze. THIS PETITION IS COUNTER PRODUCTIVE. Netscape should not delay their products because of minor bugs.

Yes. I said minor. Even if they may cause headaches, they are vastly overstated. No product is perfect. Fixes for those flaws will be introduced in 6.0.1 (or whatever they want to call it).

Try to have a bug-free product will delay the release by an inifinite amount of time.

Cheers,

--fred

Fred

November 7th, 2000 3:14 AM

Netscape, please do not release a non-compliant browser! The entire promise of Mozilla/Netscape 6 was that it would be the first 100% compliant web browser. Netscape has already lost enough market share that only an excellent release will make any difference in adoption. Users and developers have waited long enough for this release, spending another month or two to get it right will make little difference in the scheme of things, but saddling the world with a buggy (and slow) browser will only piss of web developers and turn off users.

I emplore you to spend a little more time to first make the browser compliant and secondly to make it faster.

Benjy Thomas

November 7th, 2000 3:10 AM

So Netscape will release another piece of crap like NS 4.x onto this world?

Please have mercy!

Martin Gisser

November 7th, 2000 3:10 AM

Has anyone making these comments actually been using mozilla on a long term basis, or perhaps the netscape 6 betas? Or are you all just blindly following what Mr Flanagan is saying?

I have had no problem with the Browser side of mozilla, and if the patches are still being applied to mozilla src then where is the problem? If anything Netscape should hold off release of Netscape 6 until the Mail and News is a bit more stable, but on the browser side of things there are no problems.

Ok it may not be 100% percent complient with all standards, but it will still be the most complient browser there is. But if you all want to wait until Netscape is 100% perfect then you will be waiting a bloody long time as surely you must realise that nothing is perfect.

Cheers,

Alex

Alex Stansfield

November 7th, 2000 3:10 AM

My last hope to drop IE ...

philippe

November 7th, 2000 3:00 AM

If a true 'must-fix' bug is one that is required for marketting or legal reasons, surely all standards compliance bugs fall under marketting? After all the hype built up over the last two years surrounding the expected standards compliance of Netscape 6, a release with these bugs will be a PR nightmare. I work as a web developer at a very pro-Microsoft company, and our newest project doesn't support Netscape 4 at all. Netscape's name is mud with all the developers apart from me. The only potential support for Netscape in our newest project will be version 6, if adding support won't require a major rewrite of the application. We are not allowed to get going on that until it is released because it is seen as a moving target. If version 6 comes out with these bugs, it could be the nail in the coffin here.

Mark Roberts

November 7th, 2000 3:00 AM

WITHDRAWL.

I totally and completely withdraw my earlier post to this petition.

Since I first posted I've dug around on the issue and believe Mr Flanagan to be nothing more than a noisy trouble maker who hasn't researched the issue. He's clearly glory grabbing.

Netscape 6 is in a deep code freeze right now meaning new code is difficult to get in, whatever it is.
It's funny, people complain when Netscape won't accept things into a frozen tree, then the go and complain when Linus Torvalds will accept things into a frozen tree!

The only ray of sunshine in this is that if you want to have your fully standards compliant browser, just ignore Netscape and grab Mozilla - the patches are being applied there anyway. All you'll lose is Netscape/AOL's lame branding, which, to my mind is a bonus ;)

Perhaps O'Reilly could take more care the next time they decide to let Mr Flanagan loose on their site.

Chris Jones

November 7th, 2000 3:00 AM

It's not time.

First you need:

performace (it's not normal 18Mb of ram) it's just a Browser!!!!!
standard compilance
stability

manel

November 7th, 2000 2:55 AM

Stick with the standards PDT, the sad thing is that IE 5.5 mostly does.

Mark Brady

November 7th, 2000 2:46 AM

Listen to the man!

If you release Netscape6 with all these bugs then the
developer community, who are your last true bastion of
support, will turn their back on you faster than you can say "IE6".

As a developer I have been waiting for Netscape6 for so long,
mailnly because it was promised to be a "standards-compliant" browser.
With a standard reference browser there was some hope of keeping
IE under control and keep it from embracing and extending the web.

You may just have doomed us to a life of ActiveX

Matthew Cobby

November 7th, 2000 2:45 AM

Please support the standards.

Ian Cameron

November 7th, 2000 2:44 AM

David's excellent Book, "Javascript, The Definite Guide" has had a top spot on my desk for more than a year now.
I can't count the number of hours that browser bugs have cost me in the past. At one point, we had to give up on an ambitious javascript-heavy project after more than a month of development when we were able to reproduce a fatal netscape bug and there was no workaround in sight. The code up to that point was already more than 40% workarounds but that's something we were used to.

Our solution in the past was to get rid of as much Javascript as possible and ignore the many potential features that it offers. It just wasn't worth it.
Netscape 6 was a "promised land" at the horizon that would eventually allow the return of Javascript into the list usable technologies.

Netscape's next generation browser project has been delayed and delayed even more in the past. One of it's primary goals was (is?) standards compliance. I am very upset by the disgraceful turn of events. I would rather wait another two months and get a standards compliant browser than get it sooner and buggy.

Stop the marketing insanity. Live up to your promises.

MAKE THE WEB A DEVELOPER FRIENDLY, MULTI PLATFORM PLACE!

Neopoly, offering cool multiplayer web based games

Sven Neuhaus

November 7th, 2000 2:43 AM

Netscape has to think about the HORRIBLE PR it's going to get if it releases a shoddy product after SO long. Many people are quite used to IE now. Netscape is noticably slower than IE, so they're not going to impress there. So - what else is there, apart from COMPLIANCE? Damn it, if my browser doesn't go quite as fast, I at least want it to display the pages and do the right things... Or otherwise, you know what will happen, don't you? That's right ... back to IE. Of course that isn't an option in my case because I use Linux, so I guess the most I can do is stick with Mozilla (which by the way is my browser of choice, for the reasons above). Maybe more time should go into bug-fixing & enhancements, and less into that weird-ass 'My Sidebar'. And that reminds me - for God's sake - Micro$oft is aiming at the idiots, so why not Netscape aim at the people who have a clue and are insulted by these impressive-looking wastes of space?

Daniel Kasak

November 7th, 2000 2:42 AM

Netscape has been late for such a long time that now it's only hope to recover is to have a BRILLIANT 6.0 release.
Rushing the 6.0 out of the door will do much more harm than good!

reno

November 7th, 2000 2:42 AM

<p align="center">Listen to the man!

If you release Netscape6 with all these bugs then the
developer community who are your last true bastion of
support will turn their back on you faster than you can say "IE6".

As a developer I have been waiting for Netscape6 for so long
because it was promised to be a "standards-compliant" browser.
With a standard reference browser there was some hope of keeping
IE under control from embracing and extending the web.

You may just have doomed us to a live of ActiveX

Matthew Cobby

November 7th, 2000 2:42 AM

Netscape has been late for such a long time that now it's only hope to recover is to have a BRILLIANT 6.0 release.
Rushing the 6.0 out of the door won't do much more harm than good!

reno

November 7th, 2000 2:41 AM

If Netscape is released as something other than a standards-compliant browser, then AOL will seal the fate of Netscape as a has-been. People will simply choose Mozilla instead.

Standards-compliance should be an utmost priority for the final release of Netscape 6.0.

Dan Kirkpatrick

November 7th, 2000 2:41 AM

Daniel Kasak

November 7th, 2000 2:27 AM

Time is not an issue anymore, quality & stability is.

Comply to standards, that's what sta...

November 7th, 2000 2:25 AM

Lets face it - Netscape 4.01 was a mess. Netscape 6.00 looks set to be a mess. Hey, have they learnt nothing? Obviously not...

Andrew Bowden

November 7th, 2000 2:19 AM

I totally agree with David in this article. The next release of Netscape was supposed to be The Great Hope of the Net Standards, unfortunately it doesn't even do things that NS4.x used to be able to do! So once more we either spend weeks extra developing 2(or more) versions of our DHTML / CSS / DOM / JavaScript pages to ensure they work, or we don't bother with dynamic animated pages and we lament our boring static pages.

Sound familiar? What's the point of releasing a new codebase browser that isn't complete? All those Families that get those "NEW NAVIGATOR BROWSER" CD are gonna think "Great! Faster more exciting Web" And I can expect that many of them will then see the web slightly duller as loads of pages will have worked in NS4 but not anymore. So they will wait till they get a "NEW NAVIGATOR BROWSER UPDATE!" CD patch, and the story goes on and on and on ....

It's a crying shame, I looked forward to writing nice DHTML pages when NS6 was out in the world. I could start to get rid of clunky applets as web interfaces, but alas, no!

So heres hoping that Netscape listens to this plea and shifts the release date for NS6 and allows the already written bugfixes to be applied.

Murray Steele

November 7th, 2000 2:16 AM

And there's me thinking that the whole idea of Netscape 6 was to produce a 100% standards compliant browser environment....

Martin Hepworth

November 7th, 2000 2:13 AM

It is in Netscape's long-term interest to make v6 standards-compliant. Such irregularities wouldn't be tolerated in a traditional development platform.

Felix Andrews

November 7th, 2000 2:00 AM

Please comply to standards. That's what standards are for.

bert laga

November 7th, 2000 1:58 AM

It really is hard to believe that Netscape still act so arrogantly towards users and developers, when will this stop? They make life that little bit harder for all us developers.

Matthew Bray

November 7th, 2000 1:53 AM

Making a webpage that is compatible with both IE and NS is hard enough at the moment. If Netscape releases an even more non-compliant browser then it will no longer be economical to make webpages work with IE and NS. I don't want to put a 'Best viewed with M$ IE' at the bottome of my webpages but in a competitive market I will not be alone in being left no choice.

Steven Murdoch

November 7th, 2000 1:46 AM

Please comply to standards. That's what standards are for.

Mark Tetrode

November 7th, 2000 1:45 AM

Listen to the man!

Rene Kyllingstad

November 7th, 2000 1:41 AM

As a professional Web & Multimedia Designer all I can bluntly say is, that working to make Sites Netscape compatible often really sucks big time.
I'm not very happy with Mircos~1, since I don't have very much sympathy with their marketing, customer treatment policiy and childisch and unsuperior Windows-is-everything 'behavior' - and their also not HTML 4 compliant IE, BUT:

Should I have to go through all that 'write-extra-complicated-Javascript-functions-for-NS' again, just to get some simple slicegraphics rollovers for some guy who doesn't care and pays me money to have a simple hompage to show of - I'm gonna tell them to ditch NS (and do that myself) OR pay me extra.

I mean, where's the dignity?
I like fiddeling with Linux and semi-open-source stuff, but when it comes do getting this done for the Web I don't give a shit who sets the course, be it IE or NS. So, for heavens sake, straiten yourselfes out and quit this NS workaround crap (div styles, layers and the like) - Webdesigners patience is over!!! You better believe me, I'm not the only one thinking that way - and I'm not talking about the Micros~1 junkies.

Phillip, Web & Multimedia Designer

November 7th, 2000 1:41 AM

I want a browser that supports standards 100%. And skipping ready to use patches is the wrong decission. If you waited 2+ years nothing bad will happen if this takes extra week or two.

Aidas Kasparas

November 7th, 2000 1:40 AM

Pleeze. Don�t give us again a new browser that doesn�t support the standards again...

'nuff said

kiWorm

November 7th, 2000 1:40 AM

Netscape releasing a browser that is not standards compliant will only
further decline their browser market share.

Come on guys, you've taken this long, what's a another month or so?

Adam Cassar

November 7th, 2000 1:39 AM

IE users will not go back to Netscape if it releases a product that is worse than IE or even the same as IE. In order to gain back your market, focus on blowing away IE with 100% standard compliancy and a damn good browser!

Ben Tyszka

November 7th, 2000 1:36 AM

This is outrageous!!

Common Netscape, if you release the browser in this state you will loose all the little support you still have in the developer community. This will finally deliver the whole browser-developer community to Redmond.

�skar Sturluson

November 7th, 2000 1:36 AM

Netscape releasing a browser that is not standards compliant will only
further decline their browser market share.

Come on guys, you've taken this long, what's a another month or so?

Adam Cassar

November 7th, 2000 1:36 AM

And why don't just apply patches to Mozilla (sources are under GPL aren't they?) and forget some Netscape ?
(e.g. cell padding bug still remains in Mozilla - at least in build 2000102321)

PetrH

November 7th, 2000 1:23 AM

Don't weasle out of producing a correct browser. You lost the race, now at least release the best open source product you can, and perhaps win the race again.

Lukas KNutsson

November 7th, 2000 1:18 AM

I�m using NS more than 5 years.
The last Versions (4.xx) are unstable and many users changed to IE.
If Netscape decide to ship the current NS6 branch, they will lost the last users who are using NS.
The only hope is, that a few of the users try Mozilla.

Matthias

November 7th, 2000 1:18 AM

Webstandards are most important in a world of different browsers and platforms. Maybe OAL/Netscape wants to stimulate the world-economy by creating a non-complient browser :p.

As if companies will still care about a browser which loses market faster than IE has won!

Netscape, listen to the Mozilla guys!

Bernhard Dobbels

November 7th, 2000 1:15 AM

Netscape used to lead the pack, but it has been buried by IE. Comparing IE's standard conformance to Netscape's rapidly forces you to reduce the level of functionality on web pages for Netscape users, and given the choice I would drop Netscape support completely since it is so bad. If Netscape release a new version which persists in being functionally flawed Netscape will probably soon become a non-player in the browser market.

David Barlow

November 7th, 2000 1:14 AM

What is the point in bringing out a browser, if it does not adhere to standards. When I use a browser I want a guarentee that I'm viewing a site as the author intended.

David Richards

November 7th, 2000 1:11 AM

Bernhard Dobbels

November 7th, 2000 12:58 AM

I want a standard compliant browser nothing else. I hate circumventing bugs.

Bosch Alain

November 7th, 2000 12:56 AM

Netscape are letting bureaucratic corporate marketing bullshit run the ship (the same people that let NSCP die in the first place) rather than the technical people that know best.

Maybe IE isn't 100% compliant. That's irrelevant. Maybe NSCP6 is more compliant than IE. Irrelevant. That is NOT (IMHO) the point of the article.

The point is, critical bugs are NOT being fixed, or are being fixed, but the idiot managers won't let the patches into the NSCP product.

Netscape is fucked. Add them to fuckedcompany.com right now. Mozilla may do better (esp. in the embedded market) as long as every PDT manager is fired on the spot, and the techs take back control.

Daniel

November 7th, 2000 12:46 AM

Damned Netscape!
I loved you at the university, I got doubts when i start working and now I'm losing my faith in you. Argh!

Geert
Pure Linux Developer
Kemuri Systems

Geert Vanderkelen

November 7th, 2000 12:44 AM

Did you read David's article? Do you think Netscape 6 is less standards-compliant than IE? Think again. Put the browsers through published open-source standards-compliance test suites yourself, side by side, and make an informed choice. Here's how:

1) Download Netscape 6 PR3 for Windows and IE 5.5 for Windows and and run them through these tests side by side:

Jiri Znamenacek's DOM1 Reference According to Jiri Mozilla came out best in this comparison.

Jeremie Miller's DOM Level-1 Test Suite

W3C CSS1 Test Suite

2) Download Netscape 6 PR3 for the Mac and IE 5 for the Mac and repeat.

3) Download Netscape 6 PR3 for Linux and ... oh wait ;-> . Well, compare the standards support to Opera 4.x for Linux instead, since IE doesn't support Linux at all.

Or, if you're too busy to run the tests yourself, scan the Netscape Standards Challenge, which summarizes the results and links into the tests so you can verify each item yourself.

The result is clear. Netscape 6 supports more web standards, more deeply, more consistently, across more platforms simultaneously than any other browser available. It's not Netscape 6 that will be holding back the adoption of standards on the web after its release; it is the inferior and inconsistent standards support of IE 5.5 for Windows and IE 5 for the Mac.

Pulling ten bugs out of the public bug database is not a valid methodology for assessing browser standards compliance. Doing a thorough review of published test suites is.

Eric

November 7th, 2000 12:44 AM

I work for a leading web development company and cannot begin to complain about how much CRAP we go through because of low standards compliance in Netscape.

I used to be one of those die hard andi-microsoft people but now after having seen the absolute crap that Netscape has released I have begun recommending using IE.

I thought there was hope with the launch of Netscape 6 but after reading this article and trying the pre-releases (of Netscape), it appears that they still haven�t got it right! I for one am truly disappointed and wished that Netscape simply fixed these bugs and return to its former glory.

In closing... its easy.. The stats talk for themselves.. if Netscape wants to stay in the browser business they have to FIX their browser and make it compliant. Or else.. well byebye Netscape, and Microsoft will deservedly own the browser market.

David

November 7th, 2000 12:42 AM

I've used both the Netscape 6 betas and Mozilla. If AOL isn't willing to include bug fixes because they want to push their branded Mozilla out the door, so what? Haven't those bug fixes been included in Mozilla? What is the big fuss about? If Netscape 6 has issues that Mozilla doesn't, people will use mozilla instead and the bean counters and suits at AOL will find out the hard way the error of their ways. Expect to see a 6.1 version soon thereafter that includes the fixes.

Lee

Lee Reynolds

November 7th, 2000 12:42 AM

I agree that some of the bugs are serious enough to need fixing before shipping a final product. I�d be happy with another Pre Release version and see NS6.0 as a browser you can very much depend on regarding working with the standards. Meanwhile, I don�t think MSIE is without bugs either. At some point Netscape will have to release something that they can really market, and I�ve learned to live with getting a .01 or .1 version because the .0 version wasn�t too good after all... The whole job they (NS and Mozilla developers) are doing is hard, but at least I�m happy to see the project is very alive.

Marco van den Hout

November 7th, 2000 12:41 AM

A premature release would have two very serious consequences:
The further marginalization of the Netscape browser, and a black
eye for open source development. Please allow Netscape, and
Mozilla, the chance to succeed. Don't release a final with
regressive bugs.

Tony Kimball

November 7th, 2000 12:40 AM

Tony Kimball

November 7th, 2000 12:37 AM

How much did you get from Microsoft?
Go to http://www.webstandards.org and read some great stuff.
msIE 5.5 for win does not support standards either, for mac its better but why that browser is not same for both platforms. So what does 6 do then? More Microsoft standards? Cursors and stuff.
Netscape is coming and people are using it for sure. It's faster than ie5.5 and better even.
Yeah, im also tired of waiting my "girlfriend/boyfriend" = nn to come home cause some lameass devil = msie is whispering my ear...
...whats he saying then? Lets play monopoly, i wanna win.
Mozilla will break the windows and shall set you free!

mayb [froze.net]

November 7th, 2000 12:36 AM

In our last project we only **just** decided that supporting netscape (4.7) was worth the effort. In the process we downloaded the beata version 6 and it proved to be another nightmare and another platform to support.
There won't be anyone arguing for support of Netscape 6 in the light of this project considering at every point it was netscape that proved to be the difficaulty.

Daniel Burke

November 7th, 2000 12:32 AM

I think that releasing Netscape 6 without a perfect compliance to the standards is a suicide.

I'm a javascript developer, and I'm tired to write separate code for IE and Netscape. If Netscape will fail to meet the standards I will write scripts that work only for IE, and I think that many other people will do so.

Think about it.

Maurizio Cottarelli

November 7th, 2000 12:24 AM

This is a load of crap.

This article is basically complaining that Netscape 6 is not 96% compliant instead of the 95% compliant that it currently is. Even if Netscape engineers fixed the specific bugs that this joker picked out of the woodwork, there would still be areas that Netscape 6 would not be compliant. The fact of the matter is that Netscape 6 is still far more compliant than ANY browser on the market.

What disappoints me even more is the blind sentiment that the posters here have expressed. It's obvious who has tried Mozilla and Netscape betas and who has not. Those who have not are complaining that Netscape 6 is not compliant because they have not actually tried it on existing web sites or standards compliance tests.

Those who spent the 10 seconds it takes to realize that Netscape 6 leapfrogs IE and Netscape 4.x in CSS, DOM, XML, and HTML4 compliance have thankfully expressed their support for Mozilla, Gecko, and even Netscape, the big bad corporation that gave a million lines of Gecko source to the open-source community.

For those of you who continue to chide Netscape for not delivering the product you demand on time: get off your ass and fix some bugs. It may be a complex product, but there are pleanty of smart people not working for Netscape who have gotten their hands dirty and fixed the issues they cared about.

alecf

November 7th, 2000 12:20 AM

It's a bitch developing to several browsers. Especially ECMAScript has
proven to be tricky. If you at least comply to the standards, you
give the developers a good platform for testing their scripts,
serverside generated output etc. The release of a buggy product will
do nothing to promote Netscape 6.0 as a competent browsers, on the
contrary, lots of people will use it, find it buggy, and ditch it.
Why would they want to trust Netscape 6.01 when they waited years
to see 6.0 fail? Please reconsider.

Morten Primdahl

November 7th, 2000 12:19 AM

I'm just a poor sysadmin with lot of UNIX machines around me...
I have invested my last five years into developing Netscape oriented
applications for our intranet. But frankly speaking, now I'm a bit tired.
Guys, don't let me install Windows just because of IE

Keks

November 7th, 2000 12:16 AM

As a web developer, it is already tough to get Netscape browsers to see my webpages as well as MSIE. I often have to delete content or "tone it down" just to make it look decent in Netscape. Please don't introduce more reasons not to support Netscape. Get it right the first time and save all of us the headache!

Jared Grubb

November 7th, 2000 12:16 AM

when you're the underdog, it seems that you succeed by creating a better product.

shipping a half-baked, buggy browser that doesn't conform to standards is in no way shape or form a "better product".

tell marketing to get a clue.

do it right, or not at all.

Justin Reynolds

November 7th, 2000 12:04 AM

Hey guys let up on Netscape,

This is a dog eat dog world. And alot of us get paid by the hour. If our projects can run on Netscape that means that they can run anywhere. I use Netscape as a worst case for testing my code. Maybe someday they will fix all the failures and Ill have to take out a Morgage on the house because of the reduced work load.

But seriously please fix the bugs and comply with the standards and try to do it across all the platforms that you support. It is in your own best interest. I am so frustrated when someone gives me a web site that needs a CGI script and I cant look at it on my Linux box......

Money makes the world go round....

Robert E. Meuse

November 7th, 2000 12:01 AM

I NEED A DECENT BROWSER.

When I first connected to the internet I downloaded NetScrape 2.1, and I remember saying: "This would be really neat, if it just didn't crash every fifteen minutes." Since then I've been through 3, 4, and up to something like 4.72 and it still crashes hideously. Tonight NetScrape 4.72 managed to lock up my Linux system to the point where I had to cut its power to regain control over it.

I don't write html any more complicated than the most vanilla-flavored shit, so I can't say much about standards-compliance and the nightmare of supporting both NetScrape and Internet Exploiter(tm)(r)(c). As far as I'm concerned, any features that don't work the same on both browsers just aren't of any use. The only comment I feel safe making (as a general software developer) is that if either one were truly standards-compliant, a lot of web developers would write W3C-compliant html and tell the other browser to _get_ compliant or go to hell. As others have pointed out, this sort of scenario is truly NetScrape's _FINAL_ chance for ever regaining anything resembling "market share".

I just want to surf the web. I've lost way too much email in Compromiser to ever trust it ever again. I don't have to. There are plenty of perfectly good email agents out there. Not so browsers.

I NEED A DECENT BROWSER.

Is this M19? I'll have to try that. M9 sure sucked. M$(tm)(r)(c) has, thankfully, spared me the decision of whether or not to try (on my Linux platform) the abomination which has become the industry's dominant browser. I'm reluctant to _buy_ Opera (commercial software is _so_ worthless), so I'm pretty much locked into the offalings from NetScrape. If they release a 6.0 browser that's buggy, unstable, and (amazingly!) even tougher to write webpages for than the 4.x series, they'll prove that the Evil Empire was successful in killing them off, and long ago. If you chop a chicken's head off neatly & cleanly, the dead body will run like hell. I'm afraid that this is NetScrape's condition.

I NEED A DECENT BROWSER.

I've waited five years. Another month or six won't matter. NetScrape has already lost all the market share it can to Internet Exploiter(tm)(r)(c). NetScrape is irrelevant to the mainstream internet luser marketplace, which uses WinBloze(tm)(r)(c) and AOHell, wouldn't recognize a real computer if it bit them on the ass, and doesn't care or even want to know the difference. The real (*NIX) computer world has been stuck with NetScrape for so long that their patience and loyalty has long since been exhausted. It remains in NetScrape's camp for two reasons:
1) M$(tm)(r)(c) is evil, and the *NIX world wants to sympathize with NetScrape.
2) NetScrape is the only major, free (if binary-only), multimedia (hah) browser available.

NetScrape, don't bother releasing _another_ broken browser, unless you _want_ to prove to your remaining audience that you _really_can't_ cut it, and that you won't even _try_ to keep the small mindshare that is still yours to lose.

battyman

November 6th, 2000 11:57 PM

I'd rather go back to Mosaic or lynx then ever using MSIE.
Right now, on Linux however I use KDE's konquerer, which has about everything I look for in a browser (which is NO SHOPPING MALL).

KlaasB

November 6th, 2000 11:53 PM

As a programmer in a medium size IT shop I can say that shipping a buggy product is just not generally acceptable to either the programmer or the customer. Marketing has of course been hyping the product for the past few months (or in this case years) and the client is expecting the Moon and Stars to fall out of the heavens into their hands when the program is shipped, but... well we gave a date so bugs or no it needs to get shipped... sorry.

For the past year I've been on the giving and recieving end of this issue. In my job we've developed a product and if that product has a bug that we know of and we know we can fix it, it gets done. Our customers are told about the issue, dates get moved or extra hours put in, but it gets done and we don't ship known problem to our customers. On the receiving end of things we've been dealing with a company that every bug we report we get a boxed answer of "well that's fixed in version (insert version number here)". We started out with 2.0 and the problems would be fixed in 2.01 (some were), then it was 2.5 then 2.53 then 2.54, 3.0 got shipped but was unstable don't upgrade until 3.01, 3.01 was released but it introduced two new bugs, wait for 3.5... 3.5 is out upgrade now.... oh no support for forms in a page?... not a problem that'll be fixed in 3.7. Meanwhile everyone is either sitting idle waiting for the next big advance or spending their time creating work arounds that the next big advance will cause to be rewritten.

It's a continual hold out, always waiting for that one patch that will add the functionality that the customer/client was originally promised. Don't promise what you can't or don't intend to give. This is the one thing that I can honestly say MS has never done to me. With every release of IE the promise is "better support of standards" and truly with each version their support of the standards gets significantly better. If Netscape had just promised "better support than IE" and created a chart comparison that proved it, that would have been all that most people wanted as a base. But no you had to promise the moon and then settle into a nice little orbit docked to MIR. I knew as soon as the NS/Mozilla team even suggested that they had a 100% standards compliant browser that they were blowing smoke and with each preview release and the bigger push to get it released I can see that I was right. Don't make promises you can't keep. Sometimes it's okay to shoot a little lower, be an underacheiver for once, instead of an overacheiver that is only consistant at failure. Yes I'm saying be the best straight C student you can. At least that way you'd never let anyone down.

Michael Havard

November 6th, 2000 11:53 PM

I have used Netscape for many years until recently when I switched to Internet Explorer because of the increased functionality. Having said that, as a web developer I was going to switch back to a standards based browser - please, please, please Netscape don't let the a self-imposed deadline rule out fixes to the major bugs - people will appreciate that you take a stand rather than undermining confidence with buggy code and v6.01, v6.02 etc

Keith Speers

November 6th, 2000 11:51 PM

It's beta software and should be released as such.

Chris Kuehn

November 6th, 2000 11:49 PM

Netscape,

We've been pretty damn tolerant of you so far - you've taken *years* to write Mozilla/NS6 and for the most part it's a good product, but if you fuck it up now the last bastion of customers keeping your browser on the desktops of the world will abandon you.
Of course, you don't care, because you're a division of AOL, so no-one's neck rests on NS6 being a success.
I always hoped that Jamie Zawinski leaving Mozilla was the result of a childish reaction on his part. I guess I was wrong.

The software industry will never be capable of true greatness until it wakes up to one thing - YOU DO NOT RELEASE WHILE THERE ARE BUGS YOU KNOW ABOUT. Far too many products are released these days that are full of bugs. That the majority of users have been trained with "save your work every 5 minutes in case it crashes" is the pinnacle of evidence to this effect. It's amazing that people are stupid enough to pay for such medeocrity. At least in the OpenSource world we get crap for free ;)

Mozilla/NS6 is the final realisation of Netscape's long held desire for an application platform - I wonder if that has somehow become more important than viewing web pages.

Fix the bugs, or we stop using you. You have no choice, submit to our will.

Chris Jones

November 6th, 2000 11:49 PM

Netscape is only sabotaging itself in the interest of achieving a short term goal.

Jeremy Brown

November 6th, 2000 11:46 PM

I have to Strongly agree with the theme of these responses. Netscape is not spending enought time getting the bugs out and the standards met. This only contributes to the rise to IE. I am Linux bigot, so that puts me in the position of using Netscape for much of my testing of web content.
It would really be appreciated if all reasonalble effort could be put toward a compilant browser.

-Patrick J. McGoldrick

Patrick J. McGoldrick

November 6th, 2000 11:44 PM

Netscape 6.0�s big chance is to address the issues that Microsoft chooses to ignore with IE 6.0, among them:
- good multiple platform support with full cross-platform browser compatibility;
- Java 2 support shipped with the browser;
- full ECMAScript compliance.

If they do not score perfectly in these categories, they will assumably not be a serious competitor to Internet Explorer 6.0 - and the world will have to deal with a single, dominant Internet browser. Maybe we will even see Opera become the far-off number 2 in the browser market within some time, who knows?

Regards,
Juergen Hoeller

Juergen Hoeller

November 6th, 2000 11:44 PM

Well, they can do what they want, I'll just look for the best browser, even tho' I don't want MS in my back pocket, you gott'a do what ya' gott'a do. Currently, I use both, as NNavigator often finds ways to quit responding until I restart, which is quite the pain.

gl to NNavigator in pleasing the computer community, 'cuz it ain't gonn'a happen tho'. :)

Mark Goshorn

November 6th, 2000 11:43 PM

Please do not release Netscape Navigator 6 with significant standards-compliance bugs. Non-Windows users rely on the continued viability of Netscape as their only hope to continue viewing the web without having to change to an inferior operating system just to run MSIE. A further delay in order to rectify bugs would not be significant at this point compared to the damage caused by another buggy release.

Andrew Pam

November 6th, 2000 11:41 PM

I've been a Netscape supporter for many years. I've taken much strain from peers who have since switched to IE. I just laughed at them. Netscape, please don't embarress me.

e

Edward van Kuik

November 6th, 2000 11:37 PM

I am an avid Linux user, and I am tired of Netscape being such a hideous joke. When will you get a clue? Your browser is horrid on any platform, and Mozilla, while marginally better, is still such a crock of dung. The only thing you can do by shipping this broken browser now is solidify your position as a has-been and perennial web joke. I work for a web company, and your failure to create a working product is embarrasing - I have to have a Windows box to run testing because I can not trust Netscape to keep running, let alone display pages properly.

If the goal of Netscape 6 and Mozilla is standards support, I will continue to fight for their acceptance, but if it is just to ship shitty code to make money and PR points, then Netscape is really a dinosaur, and should just give up.

Chris McKinley

November 6th, 2000 11:37 PM

I think Netscape is under some major time pressures and is doing the wrong thin by not fixing these (and other problems), so yes I agree with the author on that point.

But there is one other point I'd like to make and that is. If this wasn't an open source project you wouldn't have any idea about any of these problems until it was too late (i.e. released product). Here you can see the entire process and comment on it. If Netscape doesn't fix the bugs and doesn't change is processes to include user feedback from articles like these, then they are doomed.

Edwardam

November 6th, 2000 11:37 PM

Hey Flanagan, you just instantly lost all respect for your dumb-ass self in the mozilla community. Writing this article has done more harm than good for our project. Those bugs you listed are lame and not worth inflaming the world against Netscape. Think before you publish, oreilly.com.

Anonymous

November 6th, 2000 11:34 PM

Developers want the ability to choose which browser to develop for and recommend to clients and the business world. Today, there is no choice. Since Netscape 4's bug-ridden engine released before standards were hammered out, serious web development was forced to Internet Explorer. Even I, a die-hard Netscape user and proponent since the beginning now have Internet Explorer as my default browser, not by choice, but because it works.

If you release Netscape 6 without core standard support in the DOM, CSS and ECMA Script you will be making the same mistake again, only your fall from grace won't be as subtle as it has been (80%~ to 14%~). This time it will lead to oblivion (0%!). Please, consider the long-term impact of this decision. Your image is already tarnished, why not wait and let your browser help to enhance your name, instead of continuing to garner only ridicule and disdain.

Bruce Grant

November 6th, 2000 11:27 PM

Just get it fixed. I'm sick and tired of your bullshit.

Mika

November 6th, 2000 11:22 PM

I've been saying it all along...

While Netscape was the Underdog and bigbad M$ came in, people just din't believe me. Now it's obvious. M$ has put it time and effort and came up with the better tools, Netscape has sold out.

The only reason why Netscape always complained was that they knew from day one that they wouldn't stand a chance and that IE would end up being the better browser, simply because M$ has larger resources.

So the milked the underdog thing for what it was worth [to maintain investor's confidence] and then sold out to AOL at a hefty profit.

Nothing wrong with that - just BAU [business as usual].

But isn't it time that people started to boycott Netscape's mess-ups?

For a developer like me, in Asia, where plenty people still use NN because of the original hype, it is frustrating that I can not use all the gadgets and abilities of the standard simply because Netscape choses not to support it

Worse, they don't support things their own earlier versions supported, basically forcing me to rewrite sites each time they come up with a new browser.

Netscape has outlived it's usefulness and it's expiry date was somewhere in 98.

Lets's send the message, flame them and if they don't react, torch AOL.

Just my 1.14 cents...

DiviN TroyS

November 6th, 2000 11:21 PM

Having experienced how useless CSS is due to poor browser compliance, and the
hopes developers have placed on the new generation of browsers to finally
correctly implement various web standards, I have to wholeheartedly agree
with the author. Please do not release a broken product. The users and developers can and will wait for a properly working browser, instead of being driven away from Netscape forever by a broken one.

Toivo Voll

November 6th, 2000 11:19 PM

Please don't hose our cross-browser dhtml code.

Alex

November 6th, 2000 11:19 PM

Netscape?

As of reading this I have decided to stop all support for Netscape, entirly and completly. It is outrageous to expect developers to spend countless hours just to make a page properly render in netscape, and now throwing another stick in the spokes with another buggy release, to be followed by buggy upgrades.. No, I will write a nice article explaining why the page you have requested is not available in netscape, with links to articles explaning the same thing, its easy enough to find well written articles by reliable sources on why netscape , to put it blantly, sucks.

The vast majority of users browsing the web these days uses Internet Explorer. Like it or not. The vast majority of the minority using Netscape, can use Internet Explorer, simply by clicking a diffrent icon on their quicklaunch.. I do not think it is to far fetched to ask users to use software that will properly render my webpage.. There are system requirements for almost every peice of software you buy, and its not uncommon to view wepages with system and software requires.. flash, director, real player..

Oh course you may say, its diffrent.. Flash is already installed with most browsers these days.. yeah? well internet explorer is installed with every copy of windows 98, windows millenium, and windows 2000.

Anyway,

/rant

Jerrett Taylor

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