I hang out at the Joel On Software forums a fair bit. Someone posted yet another 'browser' topic, and instead of rant there... I'm ranting here...
The original question was about what happened to Netscape? The answer there is simple:
Netscape failed to develop a business model that suited it. Period. Nothing more. They failed.
So... Here's where the rant begins... (There is a point - I promise.)
The Mozilla foundation came up with Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox from the ashes of Netscape... Along with a business model (the important part). They then led millions of people into believing that they had a moral high ground and served the greater *cough* good. In some ways they did serve the greater good as MS finally got off it's butt and kicked the IE team in their butt and got them into motion to produce something better than IE 6. They did.
Opera meanwhile went free (dropped the paid/ad supported model) and adopted the Mozilla business model for their browser (for the PC platform). This went almost entirely unnoticed even though in many aspects Opera was (and is) superior to both IE and FF. But Opera didn't have the "open source" card to play to gain the bleeding hearts and minds of journalists that ***EDITED OUT***. (Like anyone cares as long as it does the job properly.)
While the "browser warz" thing is fun and all, it still really ticks me off to hear silly propaganda pushed all the time. "Firefox is the best browser." "Internet Explorer is *insert negative comment here*." Whatever.
FF is NOT superior to IE. IE is still more functional than FF is. Period. That's not up for debate. Look at what IE can do. It's insane. There's soooooo much in there. Albeit, most people only use a very very small portion of IE — the part that matters most on a day-to-day basis.
FF is a massive memory hog. This still plagues FF. IE is much better than it there.
IE does not perform as quickly for browsing as FF in some circumstances. FF still is faster. But Opera is faster still... IE still loads faster than FF... Opera loads quick enough and remembers where you were or prompts you... Huh? I don't see a winner there...
Microsoft cares more about backward compatibility than anyone else. That's a plus for IE.
Opera can hog memory but not like FF. I'm chewing up 219,028K with Opera right now. FF is chewing 98,172K (I'd expect to see FF hog 500,000K or more in that situation). However, Opera has 27 tabs open and FF only has 1... FF is superior? Pure BS. (Both browsers have been open for about 5 days straight now.)
The thing that really ticks me is hearing that FF is the best browser out there. That's just uneducated propaganda and totally silly. That's like saying SUVs are superior to hybrids. They both get you from point A to point B, but do different things better. Your hybrid saves you money while your SUV costs a fortune in fuel. Your hybrid won't get you up that hill, but the SUV will get you up there in quick order. There are trade-offs.
Each browser has different strengths and does different things better. If you're developing web applications... Start with FF then test for IE. If you're doing general surfing (not in Korea though), Opera rocks. If you're surfing Korean web sites - IE only. If you need to administer web sites with complex CMSes, then IE is your best bet. If you want to customize the Hell out of your browser, then FF kicks due to community support (but that isn't the browser - that's the community behind it - they aren't the same).
Saying that browser X is superior to browser Y only shows that whoever is writing doesn't understand things very well. They do different things better. Superior how? For what purpose? Are Swiss army knives better than kitchen knives? Are swords better than Swiss army knives? If all you want to do is cut some carrots... Well... That sword might not be the right tool... What are you trying to do?
I use 3 different browsers on a regular basis. Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Opera (alphabetical order there). Opera I use for about 90% of what I do. The rest is split between FF and IE.
I use Opera for most general web surfing. It's fast and works well. Great browser. Very fast and very responsive. I hate waiting.
I use Firefox for checking standards, development, and a few other things I get from plugins for it. Firefox has an amazing community behind it.
I use Internet Explorer for administration and heavy-lifting stuff. Nothing beats it there, and nothing else CAN do what IE does.
Different situations. Different browsers.
Right now (in general that is), I'd say for casual browsing, Opera is the best. For customizing your browser, Firefox is the best. For reliability, Internet Explorer is the best.
There is a piece of software about to be released that might make me switch back to Internet Explorer on a permanent basis. But it isn't Internet Explorer. It's a plugin for it. We'll see though.
Rant over. (Almost)
Oh... And in case you were wondering... this post was done in IE because neither Opera nor Firefox work properly to do it... Again, I'm forced back to IE because it just works.
There's a general rant (a pet peeve of mine) that I won't get into here, but will mention as I've alluded to it above, but I will allude to it differently here:
What are you trying to do?
The answer is always — Use the best tool for YOUR job.
With browsers, it's the same story. Please don't listen to some web developer that tests with FF and insists it is the best out there because it makes web development easier. That's silly if you don't do web development. Use what works best for you. That may be FF — it may be Opera — it may be IE. Just make YOUR life easier.
Cheers,
Ryan