Re: Proposal for new layout of the GNUstep website now online (LarsSonchocky-Helldorf)

[Ian Jones]

Riccardo Mottola wrote:

> on 4/11/03 11:49 PM, Ian Jones at ian_jones_01@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
>
>  
>
> > IMHO noone should still be using Netscape 4.*, the CSS support is almost
> > none existant, it is an antiquated browser.
> >    
>
> newer browsers have just excesive system reuirements. Think f as 68k
> computer, an older workstation or just my 604@120Mhz mac. Just about any
> Gecko derivative is useless and bloated. Netscape 4.8 has come out not
> without purpose. The proweser perspective for not-state-of-the-art platforms
> is horrible. Even on a 166-pentium laptop mozilla si unusable, Looking at
> the statistics of my webserver I see that dilo, chimera2, konqueror are
> widspread. Yes even lynx and Links. Users need to survive after all!
>
> A next-step browser is clearly missing. Does some of the old NeXT-step
> browsers have open source? So we could port it to gnustep and maybe update
> it? Maybe it is a better solution for a low-end browser than trying to wrap
> around alien code.
>
> -ric
>
>  
My point was that the Netscape 4.* series of browsers never managed to 
fully support the specifications for the technologies that it was 
surposed to. It was a poor display engine. I agree with Jeff, that sites 
should display in all browsers, the problem here is that the browser 
tries to display something and does it badly rather than not display it 
at all, this isn't the fault of the person writing the pages in most 
cases, you are constantly having to compromise for the most commonly 
used browsers and still retain some professional modern look and use of 
modern technologies. If you tried to make every site work with Netscape 
4.* and still look pretty in other browsers then you'd be pulling your 
hair out for months. I know, I've been there. Some browsers such as lynx 
don't try and display the fancy stuff, so you end up with a useable site 
unlike when netscape trys to implement CSS element possitioning and 
starts overlapping things where they shouldn't.
If you have a slow machine and need a browser that renders reasonably 
then try opera. Personally I stopped testing anything with Netscape 4.* 
a couple of years ago.

Ian