Netscape has been instrumental in pioneering HTML tags and
properties that are now considered standard. Netscape's browser
has always adhered to a stricter and more proper HTML, meaning
your tags needed to be placed appropriately, closed and not
left open, and nested correctly. Coding for Netscape made you
a better programmer, especially when Internet Explorer came
on the scene and would attempt to render any mess of code people
could put together.
Another reason Netscape always appealed to me was the speed
and compactness of it. Early versions of IE were such memory
hogs that they could slow an average computer to a crawl. When
IE was integrated into the Windows operating system (considered
a 'feature' by Microsoft) it made everything run slower. Shareware
programs (98Lite was one) were developed so that you could do
what Microsoft considered impossible - remove all traces of
IE from your system and enjoy a much faster-running Windows
setup.
Netscape has also stayed on top of the trends, offering features
that enhanced the browsing experience. Their tabbed browsing
(borrowed from Opera, but improved upon greatly from there)
that debuted last year was a very welcome feature that's still
missing from IE. Throughout its entire history, Netscape has
consistently been the more stable browser, remaining immune
to the plethora of spyware, adware, and backdoors that continue
to plague IE to this day. So why did Netscape fail?
It's a numbers game. When Internet Explorer was integrated
with Windows, it was really only a matter of time before the
user base grew so large that it would become a contender in
the browser wars. An influx of new users that had no idea how
to install or download a different browser saw an icon that
read "The Internet," clicked it, and never gave a
thought to using anything else. You could liken it to this analogy
-- if someone gave you a free car, wouldn't you use it? Even
if it didn't run well all of the time and didn't always get
you where you wanted to go? If it did what you wanted to do
most of the time, you would probably just accept it. And the
majority of IE users have done just that.
It's also frustrating on some level to see a browser like Netscape
ultimately become usurped by IE. When IE 1.0 debuted, Microsoft
was in such a rush to get a browser together to compete with
Netscape that it licensed the University of Illinois' Spyglass
Mosaic browser from them, put the Microsoft name on it, and
packaged it with Office. And this is a strategy that has worked
well over Microsoft's history for many of their products.
So where does this leave Netscape? Mozilla.org,
the codebase behind Netscape, continues to thrive and create
new browsers. Their Firefox browser is fantastic and shows promise
to carry on where Netscape left off. It has quickly built a
cult-like following of people who enjoy its speed, stability
and features. But as developers, do we need to continue to design
to Netscape standards? I have always felt that yes, we do. You
don't know what browser your users are surfing with, and it
is always in the best interest of the material being presented
to render correctly in as many browsers as possible. I will
continue to develop pages and test them in all the browsers
available to me, including Netscape.
Webmaster's Corner is written biweekly by Jill
Cataldo, Senior Web Developer for NewRamp.com. She has been
working in web development since 1996. Articles are copyright
©2005 NewRamp and may not be reproduced without permission.
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