Most people use some version of Internet Explorer to view the web. Almost everybody knows this, and that’s okay (various security concerns aside), because IE is a pretty darn good browser. Especially when one considers just how crappy some of the early version 6.x iterations of Netscape have been, claims of W3C standards compliance aside.
But there’s something that many people don’t know about Netscape, and that is the following: in 1998, they made the source code to their browser Open Source, in an effort to compete with Internet Explorer’s growing (through what’s turned out to be illegal methods, of course) market dominance. In that year, The Mozilla Organization ([url]http://www.mozilla.org[/url]) was founded and since then has been trying to put together a decent browser.
Each subsequent version which Mozilla.org has released has been incorporated into the new versions of Netscape, with the exception that Netscape itself, especially after being purchased by AOL, has put a lot of extra junk into the browser that hasn’t really helped it much. Don’t get me wrong, I use Netscape 6.2 and I like it, but 6.0 was bad. Really bad.
In any event, as the official Netscape product becomes more and more influenced by AOL-required crap, at the same time the Mozilla product has become more and more refined. I just installed Mozilla 1.0 Release Candidate 1 after reading about it over on NewsForge, and I have to say that this is one sweet browser.
From a web developer’s standpoint, much of what looks good on IE will look the same on Mozilla (as it will on Netscape 6.2.x). But Mozilla offers a number of features that neither IE nor Netscape offers, such as tabbed windows and the ability to prevent pop-up and pop-under ads from occuring, while still allowing JavaScript to function for other things, such as navigation image rollovers. That’s pretty sweet if you ask me.
If that sounds interesting to you, check out this article on NewsForge and learn more:
[url]http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/04/25/1512214[/url]
Also check it out if you’re getting tired of patching IE every other week (and sometimes more often) or are just in the mood for a change of pace. It’s got the look and feel of Netscape, but with extra, actually useful features, and you get the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing that you’re not supporting The Borg’s plan for worldwide dominance.
We may finally be entering another phase where other browsers, such as Mozilla and Opera, will allow people to have more flexibility in their choice of browsing implement, while at the same time not making web developers have to jump through quite as many hoops as in the past, in the bad old days of noncompliance. We’ll see!