Mozilla Rising
Salon.com looks at how Mozilla is stealing Netscape's thunder in Mozilla Rising
Under Netscape's development model, its programmers work on code for Mozilla, and only after a new version of Mozilla has been determined "stable" is it re-branded and released as a Netscape product. This development system has some benefits, but it's got one big drawback: It ensures that Netscape is always behind Mozilla, releasing features that the open-source browser had months before.
All of which is to say: Netscape is doomed. If there are good reasons for Internet Explorer users to switch to Netscape, there are better reasons to switch to Mozilla, which has all the features Netscape offers and none of the downsides.
The article derails a bit when they talk to that Jakob Nielsen guy. But it comes back around when they talk to a few mozdev developers and discuss Mozilla's untapped potential as a platform to develop non-browser related applications. Overall, a very positive article about Mozilla; not so positive about Netscape.
Comments
Reasons why Netscape will not cease to be relevent:
non-open components, like the spellchecker
end user support
binding with commercial components like AIM (of questionable value, but desired by some)
positioning of the browser in major software releases like AOL, Compuserve, etc.
name recognition
That said, being a feature glutton, I will continue to use Mozilla releases and nightlies.
A no-brainer for me. I use the "dead" OS, OS/2 as my primary OS. My secondary OS is Linux. On rare occasions, usually testing how web pages do/don't work, I use windoze. Mozilla is the only browser available on all three platforms at the same version level, if at all.
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