[rescue] "New" SPARCserver 20

[Joshua D. Boyd]

On Tue, 19 Jun 2001, Dan Debertin wrote:

> > See, around here people don't want to put up with the incompatibilities of
> > Netscape and Pine.
> 
> s/incompatibilities/lack\ of\ pointless\ features/

No.  Netscape has lots of pointless features.  It is just that Netscape's
pointless features are incompatible with IEs pointless features. 
 
> > They want HTML capable email,
> 
> Well yeah! HTML adds so much to email ... like ... hmm.

When it first came out, I thought HTML email was kinda nifty.  Then I
found out that most people would treat HTML email like they did their
homepages.  Meaning that it is ugly, and the raw HTML is unreadable.
Bleh.  I repent.  People shouldn't be casually given design capable tools.
 
> > Mozilla is getting better, but still not a good enough substitute.
> 
> The lack of a really usable, standards-compliant, open source,
> non-bloated, non-crashy, graphical web browser is a real crime.

There are numerous web browsers that are free (if not libre) that are
reasonably non bloated, non crashy (meaning more stable that whatever the
current Mozilla is) and standards compliant.  Opera is one.  NetPositive 
is another.  Actually, while Opera is pretty small, and it is fast, I
still think it is bloated.  It is bloated worse than Mozilla or IE in my
opinion.  Why?  Because it has aweful (IMHO, I know others disagree)
screen bloat.  I like the model where is web browser is it's own program
(even though they are only pretending in mozilla and IE).  I hate having a
web browser be this huge MDI thing.  Guestures are kinda cool though.

NetPositive demostraights the other major problem, which is that while it
isn't too terribly hard to be HTML4 compliant, it is hard to replicate IE
and Netscape bugs, and it is even harder to implement things like
Javascript, DOM, and Java.  And in today's web, Javascript and DOM are
pretty important, and Java is sometimes nice too (there are a few web
sites, like mapquest.com, which cry to have a java applet written to make
the UI more flexible).
 
> > Then, there is the whole flash/shockwave issue.
> 
> `The web browser is not a television, nor is it a game console. Quit
> trying to turn it into one.'

I hate all the flash ridden sites.  But, I gotta say, flash still has some
good qualities.  Whirl Girl comes to mind.  Flash is a good way to
distribute animation, and to dabble with interactive fiction.  I kinda
miss having a decent flash player, but I still prefer the stability I have
with non -MS OSs. 

Now, despite all these points, I still made the jump to netscape (the
mozilla) years ago.  But, I can understand why other might be more
reluctant.  Mozilla is relatively pain free compatibility wise, except
that Flash doesn't seem to work with it.

--
Joshua Boyd