RE: Netscape 6

Charles McCathieNevile wrote:

"I got earlier previews - they didn't run. But then, that's what a preview
is
about. I suggest that it would be very helpful to provide your feedback to
netscape, or to look at the development of the codebase by Mozilla."

I did send an email to them. We'll see what they have to say. And I'm going
to check out the Mozilla stuff to see if it has the same problems (I presume
it does since they're both based on the gecko engine).

What really burns me up is that they've had so much time to get this right.
It's been years since Netscape 4 came out. And how long will it be after 6
comes out before we see 7? Do we really want to wait another couple of years
before we get a browser that conforms to the standards? Is it really that
difficult to do it right?

When Netscape 6 comes out it will be adopted by millions of people, and the
vast majority of those people will have no idea whether it conforms or not.
That's because we, the site developers, will make our sites work on Netscape
6 no matter what. What choice do we have? So they'll adopt it and we'll be
stuck with it and only those who build sites for a living will really
understand what an enormous workload has just been dumped on us.

And that's what it really amounts to, isn't it? It comes down to Netscape
developers passing the work on to site developers because it's not important
enough to them to do it right.

Am I wrong? Please tell me that I am. Show me some reason to believe that
I'm not going to be saddled with another two years of frustration and extra
work.

Yes, it's a preview release. But that's a bit more than a beta. It means
it's getting close to final release time. And as far as I can see, there are
major problems left to be fixed. But instead of fixing them, the developers
seem to be spending all their time on feature bloat and fancy graphics.

If this is what open source looks like, I'll have to rethink my support of
open source. Looks like more of the same to me.

I'm sorry if I sound angry. It's just that I am. Very.

Charles Munat,
Seattle

Received on Monday, 7 August 2000 03:30:50 UTC