Readers' Comments

Reader Comments on Aardvark Daily 15 Nov 2000
From: Paul Garner
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: <layer> ...<blink> anyone?

"Personally I've always had a soft-spot for Netscape and,
despite its quirks and problems, still use it as my primary
browser -- resorting to IE only when I encounter a site
built by someone who thinks that Microsoft's many
extensions and additions to the standards are Net-law."

Aw come on Bruce...  Netscape was always more guilty of
(usually poorly thought through) proprietary additions to
the standards than IE.

If you were to browse sites built strictly to
net 'standards' like CSS and the DOM you'd have a much
better time of it in MSIE than Netscape 4.




From: Joe Dydowicz
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Why not Netscape??

Why has Netscape fallen by the wayside?...

PERSONAL USE:
Pretty Simple, most the time you have to download it and
install it, and those not comfortable with operating thier
system will stick with the little "Install Internet
Explorer" shortcut that comes with Windows and about every
other major software package around.

BUSINESS USE:
When I started a new job with a large IT firm, I requested
to install Netscape, the answer "You will stick to the
company standards (Microsoft Products)".
So most are forced to use NT WS4, Internet Explorer and MS
Outlook, whither you like it or not.

That 22 per cent market share is most likely those that
have a choice what they will use. I use both with a
preference to Netscape..Why?? Becuase I was using Netscape
since my first day on the internet many moons ago..

New people to the IT Industry are 'weened' on Microsoft
Products, so when they get a personal system at home ....




From: Paul Whitham
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Netscape

I test all of my sites in netscape 3 & 4 simply because they
are very unforgiving if you get part of the code wrong,
rather than IE, however I should point out that many
designers dislike it because it does seem to dislike things
that work perfectly well in IE and I am not talking about
stuff that is necessarily IE specific.

Of major concern to me, (and I am sure many other designers)
are the comments coming via the newsgroups that many
webpages that worked in NS4 are not rendering in NS6. I do
not particularly want to have rework my sites into another
set of versions simply because the folks at AOL have
released a buggy beta and called it a final product.




From: Uncle Stoat
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Netscape...

MSIE may be the evil monolith in Wunduhs, but on other
platforms/OSes, Netscape still rules the roost - there isn't
a Linux MSIE version as one leading example.




From: Jamie Finnigan
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Netscape compatibility.

I've seen a number of complaints about NS6 not rendering
pages which work fine in NS4.

If you do some reading you'll find that Netscape have
ditched a lot of the proprietary technology they had in NS4
in favour of the 'accepted' Microsoft standards.

A good example?  NS6 no longer deals with the <LAYER> tag.
A good place to start reading is
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/00/04/index1a.html .

I'll withhold judgement for a while, but the Linux version
I've tried crashes a lot faster than 4.75 does.




From: Cliff Pratt
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Southern Cross....

Apocryphal stories have come out of the commissioning on the
Souther Cross cable. I was told (by a Telecom Help Desk
person) that the Internet problems we were experiencing were
due to "changes made at Netgate for the Southern Cross
cable". These changes seemed to affect most of the North
Island, I heard on the grapevine. Certainly Jetstream ADSL
was out for most of a day in Auckland. It is my gut feeling
that we have experienced Internet problems for at least part
of yesterday and today. There may have been a problem with
the Mayoral Drive exchange for at least part of Monday.

Like I said, it is all apocryphal, with people relaying
other people's impression, but I feel that the Internet has
been experiencing more than the usual problems this last
four or five days.
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