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Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)

complang.tuwien.ac.at

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Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)

#71

Post by GTP »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #58
badsectoracula wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that is annoying, though personally i find browsers as the one category of software where i think this is fine, mainly because of security updates (it sucks that they tend to come with UI updates but at least on Firefox so far the main UI is fairly customizable and have made my own) but also because they are online software anyway .

Does a browser really have to be so complex that it warrants updates more often than the very sites that are being browsed? Contrast this with the design of idk MP3: a relatively simple and ultra-stable decoder app with a large variety of backend pipelines that can create MP3s. That's how the web pre-JS, pre-CSS was like. Or, with a perspective from information theory: downloading hundreds and hundreds of megabytes a…

>Does a browser really have to be so complex that it warrants updates more often than the very sites that are being browsed? Contrast this with the design of idk MP3: a relatively simple and ultra-stable decoder app with a large variety of backend pipelines that can create MP3s.

The problem is the recent trend that everything has to be a web application. So browsers aren't just to access information anymore, but literally to do everything else too. I personally don't agree with the web application trend, but this is the reason why a browser is so much more complex compared to an MP3 decoder: the decoder has to do a single thing, the browsers have to do more and more things.

Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)

#72

Post by tmtvl »

wongarsu wrote: post #65
jimpudar wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edge has vertical tabs built in. Many other browsers can be made to have vertical tabs with plugins.

Given that the issue of Firefox being forced to restart primarily happens on Linux, I doubt Edge is an option for them. Though I have to concur that Edge has one of the most stable and smooth vertical tab implementations around, most of the plugin-based ones are more fully featured but much less reliable.

Edge has been released for Linux a while now... not that I know anyone who uses it, but it's available for those who need it.

Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)

#73

Post by hutzlibu »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #58
badsectoracula wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that is annoying, though personally i find browsers as the one category of software where i think this is fine, mainly because of security updates (it sucks that they tend to come with UI updates but at least on Firefox so far the main UI is fairly customizable and have made my own) but also because they are online software anyway .

Does a browser really have to be so complex that it warrants updates more often than the very sites that are being browsed? Contrast this with the design of idk MP3: a relatively simple and ultra-stable decoder app with a large variety of backend pipelines that can create MP3s. That's how the web pre-JS, pre-CSS was like. Or, with a perspective from information theory: downloading hundreds and hundreds of megabytes a…

"Does a browser really have to be so complex that it warrants updates more often than the very sites that are being browsed?"

Since lots of money is today transfered directly (banking site) or indirectly (purchase) via a browser, I would say yes.

(even though in reality most updates are introducing new web features and not strengthening security).

Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)

#74

Post by exitb »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #70

I still use this strategy, though these days, I primarily use Mosaic and Netscape for testing. I tend to browse without JavaScript enabled, except for places I already trust to not abuse it. And if there is anything blocking me from accessing the page, such as a modal dialog, a cookie notice, a survey, a prompt to sign up for the newsletter, I close the tab. Over time, I have found that type of rude lack of considera…

Are there any version of Mosaic that are able to handle modern HTTPS?

Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)

#76

Post by josteink »

exitb wrote: post #74
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #70

I still use this strategy, though these days, I primarily use Mosaic and Netscape for testing. I tend to browse without JavaScript enabled, except for places I already trust to not abuse it. And if there is anything blocking me from accessing the page, such as a modal dialog, a cookie notice, a survey, a prompt to sign up for the newsletter, I close the tab. Over time, I have found that type of rude lack of considera…

Are there any version of Mosaic that are able to handle modern HTTPS?

Probably if using a local HTTP proxy to relay the actual traffic?

Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)

#77

Post by tannhaeuser »

NotYourLawyer wrote: post #3

My modern version of this is browsing with JavaScript disabled. Most of the sites that don’t work weren’t worth my time anyway.

There's also SEO as a simple reason that JS-heavy sites correlate inversely with content quality. Yes I know googlebot attempts a time/memory-bound render of a JS site to arrive at a DOM for text extraction, but this won't work with other search engines, and will never work as well and timely as providing static HTML to googlebot, no matter what.

Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)

#78

Post by olalonde »

dkarl wrote: post #59
olalonde wrote: post #46

A good reminder that techies are often completely out of touch with what the average Joe wants.

And companies writing the software that average people use are motivated solely by "what the average Joe wants," where "what the average Joe wants" is defined by business metrics like "how much is Joe clicking" and "how much is Joe spending."

I assume you don't believe this is a good thing? How would you measure "what the average Joe wants"?

Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)

#79

Post by pbhjpbhj »

controversial97 wrote: post #52

Around 1996 or 1997, I saw netscape showing an small animated gif. Every cycle, the memory use of netscape went up by the size of the gif. On a machine with 4MB of RAM it did not take long to stop working.

Do you mean the throbber (image that animated to show when a page was loading)?

http://www.netscape-communications.com/netscapes-throbber-an...

Re: Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)

#80

Post by forgotmypw17 »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #19
badsectoracula wrote: post #13

Considering all the discussions about JavaScript and sites with primarily text requiring it, this looks like the more things change, the more they remain the same :-P. Also see Wirth's Plea for Lean Software[0] from 1995 for another "timeless" issue. I did find this bit interesting too... > Apart from this practical reason, there's a principal one: The first time I invoked Netscape, it said that it is obsolete and re…

Firefox on Ubuntu (which I'm not using anymore for these and other reasons) and presumably on other OSs does exactly that: refuse to open new tabs/sites once every two weeks or so, telling me "one more thing we need to do" ie self-update. So you're loosing all your browsing context, though FF does a better job restoring it after restart than it used to, but still that's user-hostile and self-important as fuck. And th…

Gosh, that is frustrating to even read about.

The first time it happened, I would get rid of whatever software was involved in causing it and never use it again, except for testing purposes.

I completely agree with you about everything else too. The Web is mature enough that I can use a well-tested website with a 20-year-old browser.

There is no technical reason to not have a minimum-viable web browser with a smaller attack surface that doesn't need upgrades for months or even years.

And, in fact, such browsers exist, and I can browse most of the Web that I need with them. I just have to ignore the shitty mainstream, which I am more than happy to do.

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