On Netscape 4.x and the Stylesheets of LJ's S2 Layout Engine:

[acroyear]

Now I don't want to get into a rant here, but neither IE NOR Netscape follow the standards correctly. I support the standards, and also respect that one must move forwards in capabilities or be left behind by those that do. The browser wars were supposed to be about standards. Tragically, Netscape 1) lost the war and 2) didn't have a stable-enough code base to be fixed via open source methods (particularly when required 3rd party stuff was removed, leaving a lot of gaping functionality holes).

Thus, Mozilla had to basically start over w/ the new layout engine, Gecko. Newer *IS* better in this case, both in the Mac world and in the standards-based browsing world.

The style sheets are NOT poorly formated. They are perfectly legit to the standard; i ran 'em through a validator. That Netscape for doesn't (and will never) support the standard is neither our fault, nor LJs. That Netscape freezes or crashes as a result is certainly not our fault.

One can always try to go into the netscape configuration options dialog and turn off stylesheets. Netscape 4 allowed that, at least for windows/linux, though the resultant look was often horid and even more unreadable. The other option, seeing if the right-mouse-button menu had a "copy link location" (which it does in IE and Mozilla) isn't an option for OS 9 since Macs don't have that right mouse button to start with (and thus, most mac apps don't have those menus even for the macs with 2-button mice).

Mozilla as "newest and greatest" it most certainly isn't. Html 4.0 and CSS 2.0 are *3 years old*. Netscape 4.x is technically now 5 years old and 5 years abandoned. No bug fixes or functionality fixes have been done in ANY Netscape 4 release since 4.6. The only reason ANY release after 4.6 happened is to fix security issues to keep the feds (who'd committed to Netscape for a solution back in the 3.x days) from complaining. That's it. No other bugs like the multitude of CSS problems have ever been fixed in a Netscape 4 release since 4.6 over 5 years ago.

So no, I have no intention any more of crippling my stuff to work with a product that has been abandoned by its owners for half a decade.

The world moves on.

Comments

[blueeowyn.livejournal.com]

It might interest Joe to know that I happen to prefer MS Word to Word Perfect, AppleWorks, ClarisWorks and several other word processors that I have had access to over the years. MS Word and MS Excel are my friends. I use PowerPoint but think that it in general is over-used (not an attack against MS, but an attack against the put it into bullets and don't bother explaining anything method of presentation). I haven't used Access but I hear that it is a PIA and lacks a few protections against erroneously deleting the entire DB due to a slip of the finger.

Left to my own preferences my default apps are:
Netscape, MS Word, MS Excel, Filemaker, Telnet to unix for unix mail & newsgroups, Eudora for work email, SPSS, MeetingMaker, Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Photoshop, BBEdit Lite, Goliath, Fetch, and Stuffit.

I dislike a lot of what Bill Gates is doing. I find the newer version of Word a pain to use and a huge memory hog (so I usually use the older one). I find the whole "IE is necessary to the OS" saga extremely annoying (and unfortunately effective). I have heard so much about the security flaws in IE and the lack of stability of it (to say nothing of the stupid left toolbar that takes my small screen and makes it smaller) to NOT want it on my computer (esp. since with very few exceptions, it doesn't fix things, it just shows different problems).

That said, it will probably stay since Hotmail won't work anymore with Netscape (though I can't say I am at all surprised).a