[WEB4LIB] Is Netscape dead? I asked Jeeves

[Thomas Dowling]

>
> But, seriously, are most others in agreement with Dan Lester's post
> (portions below) and is there really no other choice but IE?

[Amazing--we're this far into this thread, and not one Python dead parrot
reference.]

For all intents and purposes, Netscape the comany has been out of the
browser development business for a year and a half.  They provide some
funding for mozilla.org, but that's about it.  Yes, they're dead as a
browser company, and their goal these days is to make it as a portal site.

Netscape the browser, as available today, is essentially unchanged from
the version available almost three years ago.  4.0b1 came out in December
1996, the flaky CSS support was added a couple months later, and the
browser has not been improved since then.  Yes, the Netscape browser as we
know it is dead.

As it happens, just yesterday mozilla.org released the last major pre-beta
version of their browser (at least, that's the plan).  If you care what
happens to browsers from here on, download M11.  It will crash early and
often, but while it's running, it does the right things.  It remains to be
seen whether this can become an end-user product in time to still have any
relevance.  So Netscape might keep their hand in as the most prominent
distributor and repackager of mozilla.  Otherwise, they'll just dissolve
into AOL (they might anyway).


> ...I for one am
> not willing to let go of Netscape that easily...yet.  I find some of the
> reasoning in why it is a done deal that IE is *it* akin to the idea that
we
> should all just shop at Amazon and admit that independent bookstores are
a
> thing of the past.  Not trying to start a war, but interested in hearing
> why or why not people are ditching Netscape.
>

An old hacker's motto: Never fall in love with your software, because it
won't love you back.  However fond you may have been of Netscape, they
will never again be the browser company we once knew.


Thomas ("Norwegian Blue") Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu