The Current State of Web Browsers

July 21, 2003 | 2 Comments

With the death of Netscape last week there has been quite a bit of talk about what the future holds for the various browsers and the Web in general.

As a Web designer and developer this, obviously, is of great concern to me. However, I can’t say I’ve had too much time to think about it and frankly I have to work with (or deal with) whatever comes regardless — that’s my job.

I did come across a ray of hope, whose conclusions I’ll leave you to draw on your own. While over at my (probably average Web savvy) brother’s house this weekend I noticed something I’d have never thought to see. Firebird running on his computer. I asked him — he loves it, and has no special reason to other than he feels it’s a better experience than he gets with IE.

I didn’t have to tell him, sell him or anything. He heard to download it from a friend and has been passing the word along. He didn’t hear that from a Web geek or anything of the sort, just plain old word of mouth among “average” Web users. To me this was a really, really good sign. A bit of a surprise — but a good sign.

For more on this issue, check out what the following fine folks have to say:

Filed under: Web General

Comments

1. Simon Willison said:

That’s brilliant news - I haven’t heard of anyone installing Firebird without me (or one of my other converted web developer friends) prompting them heavily. It’s great to know that word of mouth is working outside of web developer circles.

Posted on July 21, 2003 04:11 PM | #

2. tim said:

I had a very similar experience a few weeks ago. My fiance (average end-user) was trying to check work email from home using a secure URL provided to her from the IT dept. Using IE6/WinXP at home, the Web-based interface (Outlook over the Web) timed-out. It wouldn’t load (still not sure why). I really didn’t have time to help her sort it out at the time, so she says “why don’t I just use one of these other browsers…”. I said it probably wasn’t the browser, especially since almost every piece of technology in question was Microsoft: the browser, the Outlook server, etc. So she fires up Mozilla 1.4, types in the URL and her username/password when prompted, and her mail loads in about 1 sec. She says “hey mr. web smarty pants, it works with this Godzilla browser-thing…I’m using this from now on”. Although I haven’t been able to keep her from calling it Godzilla, I haven’t seen her use IE since.

Posted on July 26, 2003 07:35 PM | #