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> ...re-igniting competition for web browsers, moving the web platform forward I fondly remember when the selling point of Firebird/Firefox was that it isn't a
by zeroname 8y ago
> ...re-igniting competition for web browsers, moving the web platform forward
I fondly remember when the selling point of Firebird/Firefox was that it isn't a bloated, sluggish piece of crap unlike all other major browsers (including Netscape) at the time.
Back then, it was still possible to develop a web browser without hundreds of millions of dollars in budget. Fast forward to how the web platform has "progressed" and browsers are again sluggish, bloated pieces of crap, but now that horrible technology also powers far more applications. We've dug ourselves into a hole that we can't get out of anymore.
- quonn 8y agoBack then, Gecko was already complex. Firefox streamlined the UI, dropping for instance the Email client and unnecessary widgets. It can be done. Just the engine remains complex, but it‘s not that big a problem. If needed, we can add a new doctype, just like HTML5 that puts the browser into some sort of strict mode where features are dropped.
- dageshi 8y agoI don't recall precisely when but I do recall Netscape taking FOREVER to load, like you'd click on it and it'd take 10 seconds or more (that's what it felt like) to load. It'd sit on a splash screen telling you all the crap it was loading. IE at the time just loaded like a flash in comparison. That was ultimately why I recall switching to IE at the time, nowadays there's no browser with that level of annoyance I don't think.
- megablast 8y agoWell sure, IE loaded all that crap when windows loaded.
- Sharlin 8y agoYeah. It was already running the whole time, heck, it was the very shell of the OS. Opening an IE window was literally no different from opening a new (filesystem) Explorer window. Hence the decade-long antitrust battles.
- dageshi 8y agoNot really, there was a point where it loaded pretty snappily. I think they bundled a bunch of stuff like email client e.t.c. and it was busy loading that stuff along with the browser. That's my recollection anyway.
- MiddleEndian 8y agoEven on Mac OS back then, IE was the better faster option of the two. Obviously it got left in the dust afterwards.
- icedchai 8y agoYeah, I recall that, too. I think it's when they transitioned from "Navigator" (web browser only) to "Communicator" which bundled a lot of other crap in: mail, news, and I forget what else. Netscape 3.x and earlier was pretty light weight. I remember running Netscape 0.9something on my original linux desktop with 8 megs of RAM!
- tinus_hn 8y agoThe browser actually have become so fast websites can afford to be bloated turds.