[ Previous Article | Next Article | Index of Articles]
This article first appeared in the June 2000 issue of the Louisville Computer News. It was written by Lee Larson.
Way back in rough and rowdy good old days of the Internet--six or seven years ago--people used to speak of the "browser wars." Back then, Netscape Navigator was taking over from Mosaic as the browser of choice, and Microsoft was just entering the picture with its weak renaming of Spyglass Mosaic as Internet Explorer. It was clear Microsoft had Netscape in its sights, and slowly, feature by feature, Explorer became, first a clone, and then an equal rival to Navigator. Eventually, the choice between the two became as irrelevant as choosing between Pepsi and Coke.
Even though the differences between the two are few and small, and each has both good and bad features, Explorer has taken over as the most-used browser among Macophiles. Of course, Apple is largely responsible for the dominance of Explorer. Ever since Mac OS 8, both Communicator and Explorer have been installed on all Macs, but Explorer is made the default browser on all new machines and all fresh installs of Mac OS. Many novice users will just stick with the default installation, not even knowing an alternative is right there in front of them. No doubt, making Explorer the default browser was one outcome of the Jobs-Gates deal that helped to keep Apple from vanishing three years ago. It also added one more small wound to the already mortally wounded Netscape.
Early this year, Microsoft introduced Internet Explorer 5 for the Mac, and Netscape, now owned by AOL, released several iterations of Communicator 4.7. It appeared the tit-for-tat rivalry was continuing. Imagine our surprise when we learned in mid-May that Microsoft has given the IE team "...the additional opportunity to work on developing the next generation of Personal TV offerings at WebTV." There's one more version in the wings--a "carbon" compliant build for Mac OS X that's supposedly all but finished. After winning the war, Microsoft may be gathering up its chips and going home.
This unexpected move by Microsoft happens at an odd time. The browser wars are about to heat up again with a new set of combatants. New browsers are popping up all over the place.
iCab is certainly the most widely known of the new crop. It's still under development by a small German company, but the latest beta versions are available for download (www.icab.de). The version of the current beta release is called iCab Pre2.0. When it's finally released, they plan to charge about $30 for the program.
Having grown used to the bloatware produced by Netscape and Microsoft, iCab seems amazing. It requires as little as four megabytes of RAM, runs under Mac OS 7.0, and even comes in a version that runs on the older 680x0 machines, although the 680x0 version does not support all the snazzy new plug-ins and modern Java.
The Pre2.0 version is a fine program, supporting nearly all the features of the big boys. It's fast, small and works very well. It's a breath of new life for older machines that are either stuck running older versions of the big two, or creaking along on the huge newer versions.
iCab has one innovation in particular that is quite interesting. Near the upper right-hand corner of its window is a little face. The face smiles or frowns, depending on whether the HTML code for the page being viewed is correct, according to the published specifications. iCab rarely smiles.
There are still a few things missing, most notably full JavaScript support. The omissions will be fixed before the real commercial release.
The next new browser is a rather unusual case, because it really comes in two somewhat different versions. Back in January 1998, shortly before being acquired by America Online, Netscape announced it was hosting the development of a new open source browser called Mozilla. To start it off, they opened up the source code to an early beta version of Communicator 5.0 and told the open source community to begin working on it.
Soon an active development group of volunteer programmers was formed, and they began working on Mozilla for Macintosh, Windows, Linux and various flavors of Unix. The idea of the group is to create one open source browser that can be compiled and work pretty much the same on all the platforms. At their support web site (www.mozilla.org), you can find the very latest compiled version for each platform, created most weekdays from the previous day's work, as well as the source code to compile your very own from scratch. The correct download for most people is the most recent 'Milestone' release, instead of the latest build, because Milestone releases are somewhat better tested. Right now, the they're at Milestone 15.
Mozilla on the Mac is unappealing to most Mac users because it doesn't look or act much like what they're used to. The interface is some sort of common denominator that will work on all the target platforms, and it has the look and feel of Mac OS 7 combined with Unix X-Windows. It's also pretty slow, cantankerous and crashes my G4 every single time when I quit, but works pretty well on a Mac 9500. The developers promise to address all these issues as the project continues. After all, as they say, it's an open-source volunteer project; if you don't like something, jump in and fix it yourself!
Netscape engineers are among the people working on the Mozilla project. Several months back, they took one of the Milestone releases of Mozilla, and began tinkering with it in the back room to create Netscape Communicator 6. The prerelease early beta of Communicator 6 is already available on the Netscape downloads site (home.netscape.com/browsers/6/). Although still recognizable as Mozilla, there have been some interface improvements for the Mac version. It still crashes my G4 when quitting.
Don't bother with Mozilla or Communicator 6, if you expect to get any real work done. In another six months or so, both will probably be ready for more serious consideration.
One of the most popular non-mainstream browsers for Windows comes from a Norwegian company called Opera Software (www.operasoftware.com). Their browser, called Opera, is small, amazingly fast and feature rich. They've been alpha testing a Mac version for several months, and they promise a public beta version any day now.
In fact, their Mac plans sounds very ambitious. They're promising browsers for older 680x0 machines, all the newer machines, and even a native Mac OS X version. They claim the program will require less than three megabytes of RAM and a download of under two megabytes.
There are other browsers out there to try. Apple killed CyberDog several years ago, but it apparently still works, with a few rough edges, under Mac OS 9.04. A surprising number of people are hanging on to it. A more spartan approach to the Web is represented by the text-only, multi-platform browser called Lynx. A MacLynx port is available (www.lirmm.fr/~gutkneco/maclynx/). It's small, fast and a good choice for reading sites when you want information in a hurry without the slow and distracting eye-candy.
How could this article pass without some mention of the "Love Virus" that brought the Wintel world to its knees in early May? Somehow, those who do such estimations, say this little spring frolic will cost at least $10 billion to clean up.
This Love Virus only affects Windows machines, because it exploits several features peculiar to Windows in order to spread. It's written in Visual Basic, a Windows scripting language, and it needs the Microsoft Outlook address book to choose its next victims. Since this combination of Windows plus Outlook is as common in business as the suit and tie, the virus spread like smallpox among the Indians.
As soon as the crisis struck, many Mac advocates, complacently secure with the knowledge that it couldn't affect them, smugly posted Internet messages saying something like "Tsk, tsk... just one more reason not to use Windows."
The problem with such an attitude is that a similar virus could certainly be written for the Mac. Look at what's necessary. Instead of Visual Basic, Mac's have AppleScript, although any programming language would work. The most widely used Mac e-mail clients, Outlook Express, Eudora and Emailer, are easily controlled by programs. It's possible to disguise a destructive program as, for example, a SimpleText document. The program could even run SimpleText and load some text for victims to read while it did its dirty work in the background. A commentary on the Trojan war would be a nice touch.
A MacLove virus would be harder to write because Macs aren't as homogeneous as the corporate Wintel clones attacked by the real Love Virus. To be really effective, it would need to know how to drive three or four different e-mail programs, and locate address books that might live anywhere on the hard drive.
Of course, just as with the Love Virus, somebody would have to double-click the program to let it do it's damage. Mac users aren't all that much more intelligent than Windows users, so there would likely be plenty of people to open an e-mail attachment that would share itself with hundreds of their closest friends.
The main speaker at the June 27 LCS meeting will be yours truly, who will test crash all the browsers mentioned above, and a couple of others as well, time permitting.
The Louisville Computer Society meets from 7:00Ð9:00 P.M. at Pitt Academy, 4605 Poplar Level Road, at the intersection of Poplar Level Road and Gilmore Lane. Everyone is welcome to attend. For more information, on the web go to www.aye.net/~lcs, or e-mail lcs@aye.net.
[ Previous Article | Next Article | Index of Articles]
/home2/lee/www/cgi-bin/textcounterdata/ [TextCounter Fatal Error: Could Not Write to File __lee_macwritings_LCN0006_shtml]