But, this did bring to mind somewhat of a revelation to me as to what I see as a possibilty in the near or not-so-near future of the internet/browser 'wars'. Right now, albeit this to be a revolutionary, new, amazing science, it's also a business, BIG business, everyone is vying to be the best and the first - advertising dollars, IT dollars, corporate domain, etc, etc ... It's been my observation that there are really no BAD browsers anymore. They are all unique in there own ways, while sharing standards and similarities, they all bring there own shining qualities to the table of the internet. While personally, as with most of you in this forum, I have always remained, and probably always will remain, loyal to Netscape - I cut my teeth using the internet about the time 0.9 was released, it has been an amazing journey, I can't help but feel that Mr Andreesen drops by Mountainview every now and then to say 'hi' ... Netscape 7 is my default, as was every incarnation of 6, and then the older Communicator series before, but I also have and use on a regular basis - 3 other browsers, because as I've said, there are no BAD browsers anymore and they all have there qualities that I find most useful when I need to use them. Sad but true, Internet Explorer is at the bottom of the list of the other 3, I rarely use it, but I do use a derivitive of it much more frequently - MSN Explorer, because it does have communications enhancements far above IE, and I find is also more secure right from the get-go. I keep the latest issue of NS 4.x primarily because it's there still and I am loyal - I simply like to refer back to it from time to time for old time's sake, but it is, painfully slow compared to its new sibling, and left standing still as far as features. I found it interesting to watch Mozilla in the last year as it approached that magical 1.0. Quite exciting! I did my very small bit of providing feedback and it felt very good to know that I was allowed to participate in something so groundbreaking in this science, and I think we all agree that this will in turn restore Netscape back to being king of the Mountain once again! (I actually already feel that has happened) Now that 1.0 has been achieved, I find that my needs are met now by using the end commercial result which is Netscape 7.0. It contains the communication medium that I find I cannot conduct things without now, ie AIM and a very useful multi account email, along with superlative Gecko rendering.
This brings me to the focal point. There is one other browser that I find to be number 2 on my list. While 98% of the time, all of my nternet access is done by means of NS 7.0, I find that the other 1 1/2% I can attribute to Opera. The other 1/2 % is a split between MSN Explorer and then lastly - IE. Opera seems to be on another track of the future, it borrows heavily from Netscape in my opinion, but takes that information and mutates it in very interesting ways. Namely, the abilty to revert between ID strings to adapt to pages rendering different codes. This one feature alone I find to be evermore innovative, it's an old feature, but all inclusive. I foresee a single program one day that will have the abilty to contain all of the primary browsers with a shared or interactive email client, and shared and interactive instant messaging, as Trillian leads the way in that department. Very interesting indeed, exciting!
EDIT Subject renamed by Admin.
