[WEB4LIB] Mozilla support at university libraries and computing centers

[Thomas Dowling]

At 02:18 PM 6/27/2002, Stacey Kimmel wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I'd like to hear from any universities that use or support the Mozilla
>1.0 browser and mail client in computing labs or libraries. Here at
>Lehigh U we are upgrading our public PCs to Windows XP, and for various
>reasons the Netscape 4.79 browser/mail client is being dropped from the
>public labs. We are currently testing Mozilla and Netscape 7 beta and
>would like to hear from others in a similar situation. Would be
>especially interested in hearing of any compatibility issues with
>library databases, Web services, etc.


At least at some theoretical level, Mozilla is a developer's testbed rather 
than a product for end users.  It's a great browser, and really only runs 
into problems where some bozo wrote code that says, in effect "if you're 
using Netscape 4 do foo; otherwise you must be using IE4+ so do bar" where 
both foo and bar are proprietary functions not supported in the open 
standards Mozilla is built on.  There have also been reports of some 
applets that don't run under the Sun Java plug-in used by Mozilla 
browsers.  Of course you can download it and test it with all the sites you 
send your users to.

As a development platform, it may always have debugging code in it that 
affects its performance.  On the other hand, its best known consumer 
offshoot, Netscape 7, is so focused on driving AOL ad revenues that it 
disables some good Mozilla functionality (like the ability to turn off 
pop-up windows).

For Windows and Linux machines, you might want to examine Beonex 
Communicator at <http://www.beonex.com>.  Even though its version number is 
0.8, it is built on Mozilla 1.0 and is very stable.

I haven't really heard anyone going gaga for the mail clients in 
Mozilla-based browsers.  You may want to upgrade the browser now but take 
its mail client as a stopgap while you comarison-shop for a better one.



Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu