TCS - Battle of the Browsers – IE May Lose

Battle of the Browsers – IE May Lose

by Ira Wilsker
Golden Triangle PC Club
From the January 2004 issue of the I/O Port Newsletter

First, in 1993, there was Mosaic as the dominant web browser; it was clean, small, fast, efficient, and free for personal use. Then one of the creators of Mosaic struck out on his own, and opened a tiny company called Netscape, where he intended to create an even better browser which he could hopefully sell for a profit. In the mid 90’s Netscape was the dominant browser, easily pushing Mosaic aside, and approaching monopoly status. Netscape was having some small financial success until Bill Gates stated that Microsoft would become the internet powerhouse, and released Internet Explorer, which to this day is still based on Mosaic. Mass distribution of Internet Explorer started in 1995. Internet Explorer was integral with Windows 98, and subsequent operating systems, and included with virtually every Microsoft product since. While Netscape was dependent on sales to survive, Microsoft gave away millions of copies of Internet Explorer for free. Netscape entered a death spiral, with only 13% of the browser market in 1997, when as a slap at Microsoft for starting MSN as a competitor, AOL purchased Netscape, promising greatness again for the once-premier browser. The series of ubiquitous antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft followed, one of which cited Microsoft for “allegedly” trying to crush Netscape. A series of bloated and unstable versions of Netscape appeared, along with generally dour reviews, and Netscape continued its plunge in market share. AOL slashed the Netscape budget, and laid off most of the Netscape staff, and Netscape was doomed. AOL generously released the source code, and helped to create a foundation to promote the “open source” code. With this freedom, Mozilla.org was officially born on February 23, 1998.

Imagine a feature rich free browser, with well written code, an excellent email companion, address book, news reader, comprehensive web page creator, free support, and a variety of other benefits, including an integral pop-up blocker. Imagine a browser that is compatible with virtually all web pages and formats, freely available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and other operating systems, and available in over 50 languages “from Afrikaans to Zulu”. You no longer have to imagine such a browser, because Mozilla 1.5 is here now, and version 1.6, currently in beta testing, is about to be released.

I recently downloaded Mozilla 1.5 from www.mozilla.org (also available on almost all other major download sites), installed it, and was very pleasantly surprised. Instead of the slow performance of AOL’s Netscape 6 (which I had previously uninstalled), I was greeted with a clean interface reminiscent of the pre-AOL Netscape 4, and also easily recognizable to Internet Explorer users. About the only difference I can see is that some web pages look slightly different than they do on IE, but this is to be expected. Mozilla is compliant with the international W3 standards, a recognized standard that virtually all internet utilities, except IE, comply with. There was a “zero” learning curve with Mozilla, because it automatically imported my IE “favorites” or bookmarks into its bookmark list.

Not to stand on its laurels, which many computer publications have justly recognized, Mozilla is in a state of constant change. In the wings approaching final stages of development, is Firebird, a small but much faster new browser. Along with browsers, Mozilla is also developing Thunderbird, described as “An e-mail and newsgroup client with powerful, new junk mail controls.” Mozilla, Thunderbird, and Firebird are multi-platform software, functional on Macs, Windows, and Linux machines. Mac users may also like Camino, Mozilla’s specialty browser for Mac OS X, described by Mozilla as “a web browser optimized for Mac OS X with a Cocoa user interface, and powerful Gecko layout engine. It's the simple, secure, and fast browser for Mac OS X.”

I tried the Mozilla email client, and it was fast and intuitive. It looks familiar, as it is organized similar to Outlook, but seemed faster. The email client includes an intelligent “junk mail control” function, which learns what is spam, and what is not. Safety and security was obviously important to the email developers, because Mozilla email will not allow executable code to run in an email, prevents email from setting cookies, and other security benefits. At present, the Mozilla address book is not capable of being hijacked by the contemporary worms and viruses, thus not having the critical vulnerability plaguing Outlook users. Another feature of the Mozilla email client is the ability to access and manage the thousands of newsgroups available. For users of Outlook, Outlook Express, and Eudora, migrating to Mozilla is easy, as it can import email and address books nondestructively from those programs, and be in full operation in an instant. AOL users can use a third party utility to migrate to Mozilla email.

Creating web pages with Mozilla is very easy and intuitive, as the integral Composer looks like, and works as a common word processor, but creates HTML code much cleaner than Microsoft’s.

If you are tired of slow internet performance, bloated browsers, insecure email clients, pop-up ads, and other annoyances, give Mozilla a try, www.mozilla.org.

Microsoft, take note; your near-monopoly of the browser market is again being threatened by a group of free-spirited geeks and nerds. The Mozilla dragon is about to take a bite of your market share.



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Tulsa Computer Society 1/01/2004
Don Singleton, President