AOL to release new version of Netscape

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The war ended a long time ago

When IE became a free part of the OS, few Windows users bothered to figure out which browser suits them best. We still had some users with ******** preferences for one browser over another, and an occasional user who looked at each one objectively and picked the one that met his needs.

I started off using Chameleon. It came with my suite, and back then, Internet users needed a suite of software because the Web was not a mainstream part of Internet traffic yet. I soon switched to Netscape, which was phenomenal. Almost all of what made Netscape a great product is now taken for granted, but had MS and others not stolen the ideas, web browsing would not be what it is today.

As time went on, Netscape got bloated, IE got better, and in some (but not all) respects, it pulled ahead. I stuck with Netscape because I did not like the idea of a browser that was part of my OS, since whenever it blew up, it took half the OS with it. Netscape was a lot more polite when it blew up.

Over time, I switched to Opera, and then to Mozilla, looking at each release of each browser to see what suits me best. For pragmatic reasons, it's no longer simple to switch. In the early days, vendors figured out that they needed to import bookmarks (used to be called hot lists) in order to get somebody to switch. These days, they need to import saved form data and password data too, so switching is no longer trivial.

But the big question is, who uses Netscape? Mozilla works better, and anybody adventurous to move away from the default browser is not likely to stick with Netscape merely because he always used it.

As for features, I don't think it's worth the time to try to fight it out here by saying what's better. We can choose for ourselves. But for the typical naive end user who won't look for add ons, I've found that if I recommend Mozilla, I get nothing but thanks and they never look back. Wasting time with somebody who has his mind made up already will get you nowhere.

Posted by: wresnick   Posted on: 05/28/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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