Overheard about ... Mozilla vs. Microsoft

In cyberspace, no one can hear you scream. But scream I must. There's been about a billion articles -- in print and otherwise -- regarding the massive marketing war going on between Microsoft's and Netscape's newest browser releases.

The journalists love this shit. They get to write soppy articles comparing the two and enumerating the obvious pros and cons. Some point out the more techincal nuances to look as though they're not just floating with the tide. Some are practically powering a speedboat down the river. So here's my stab at the whole mess.

"Microsoft Wins"

People are way too ga-ga over ActiveX. The stuff that's being proposed for ActiveX is either too sci-fi for general Internet use or already widely available elsewhere -- RealAudio comes to mind.

So, all this score tallying in Microsoft's favor because of ActiveX and Visual Basic Script really roasts my tomato. Of course Microsoft's newest browser supports VBScript and ActiveX first -- they hand-developed their own damn standards to drop into their own damn browser! Funny how convienient that worked out for them.

Microsoft also went down the look-and-feel path. The Internet Explorer interface is so sugar-coated I can feel myself gaining weight with every right-click of the mouse button. Draggable toolbars aren't exactly mind-blowing technology, and neither is the way it tries to latch into the Windows 95 desktop.

Stylesheets and floating frames are nice, but Netscape can catch up on both of those pretty quick. So, since Java and plug-ins are both available from the Boys From Mountain View, Internet Explorer hasn't made some quantum leap. The only differentiator is the free price tag, and that's all but lost with insulin shots I'd have to buy -- and we all know that Navigator is free anyways. (Nudge-nudge wink-wink).

"Netscape wins"

Navigator's interface is plain but functional. Netscape's decided to play the size and performance card, replete with a nice chart showing how it beats up Internet Explorer in page retrieval time and disk footprint.

Look -- this is incredibly dubious. Besides the fact that they're talking about a difference of seconds, the way the Internet is architected, there are all sorts of other factors to make a page load fast one time and slow another. And the size issue -- when I installed all eighty megabytes of Windows 95 onto my machine, I gave up on the idea that I could get away with anything less than a gigabyte of hard drive space. So Internet Explorer takes up a few more disk clusters -- not an end-of-the-world situation.

Why they both suck

Basically, they both do the same thing. They look pretty much alike, they keep your bookmarks and cache pages and shit, and they both crash regularly enough to be Truly Annoying Applications. They both string you along with free offers to news and content sites that, with a little scrounging, can be had for free anyways.

Hell, I still like using NCSA Mosaic: highly configurable, sticks to the W3 specs, and a pleasure to use. Sure, you're missing out on Java and ActiveX -- if you can live without a scrolling marquee dingus on the screen it's a nice alternative. And it matches Microsoft's much-touted price tag to boot. However, the by-product of the browser beatings are Netscape/Microsoft proprietary tags, and Mosaic can't handle them at all. Any aggressive Web site is going to look like shit. Which means you're stuck with picking Netscape's or Microsoft's solution to do any serious browsing. So much for "competition".

I know I promised this would be the final word on the insanity, but ... c'mon. No way. These guys are going to provide a ton of fodder over the next twelve months. Ignoring them would be like Jimmy the Greek skipping the Kentucky Derby to not be late for afternoon Mass.