Scott Andrew wants developers …

Scott Andrew wants developers to stop coding for 4.x browsers and to embrace the possibilities around developing web applications for the 5.x and 6.x browsers. This is exactly what the Mozilla community has been trying to beat through the heads of people for months when they say that Mozilla is more than just a browser.

On that note, here’s a list of known bugs in Netscape 6, so that web application developers can code around them. Also, RichInStyle.com has a Mozilla 5 and Netscape 6 bug guide.

At my job, we’re developing a set of browser-based tools that uses HTML 3.2 as the foundation for page display. The decision to use the older HTML standard was due primarily to the significant number of expected users we’re going to have who are in countries and locales that use older browser technologies, older computers, and slower connections to the Internet. For us to ignore this portion of our audience and develop only for 5.x and 6.x browsers would mean that we’re shutting out a large portion of the audience we’re trying to attract (open source software developers). Also note that the DOM/scripting capabilities that the 5.x/6.x browsers offer are almost useless for the kinds of tools we’re building, since we aren’t dealing much with DHTML. Our applications reside in the traditional “page” part of the browser, and rarely (if ever) need to access the DOM or require the use of a technology that makes the 5.x/6.x browsers so exciting.

What’s even more interesting, is that while we’re firmly entrenched in building “page-based” web applications, we also are moving into building applications that do take advantage of the scripting and DOM capabilities of Mozilla. Before my employer was acquired last summer, we were contracted by Netscape to develop the Theme Builder tool for Netscape 6 using nothing but the existing technologies that shipped with Netscape 6 (a.k.a Mozilla). This is one of the first examples of an entire application being written on top of the Mozilla codebase that was not a web browser or a browser companion tool.

Salon: Open-sourcing the Apple. An excellent article about Apple’s new Mac OS X and how it may prove to be the competitor to Microsoft that everyone has been waiting for.

I just realized that I’m not reading Metafilter as much anymore. I remember when Matt came up with the idea, built the site, and then invited everyone to help build it into a cool community site. Lately, it seems like I’m not really reading Metafilter as much as I’m scanning it every couple of days. No longer am I reading the commentary unless it’s about something I care about. And I realized that this is because the noise has surpassed the signal. There is now far more noise and crap being posted in the comments than there is thoughtful commentary and observations, which is what attracted me to Metafilter in the first place. And I think, this is exactly what happened to Slashdot as well.

Human Interface Subtleties.

With all the fawning over Groove lately, it’s interesting to read this discussion about Groove not being open source.

Silly Stuff: How Much is Inside?

Posted by Cameron Barrett at November 17, 2000 10:27 PM

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