WebProNews

Tag: Netscape

  • Goodbye and Good Riddance: Internet Explorer Is Officially History

    Goodbye and Good Riddance: Internet Explorer Is Officially History

    Microsoft has officially retired Internet Explorer, ending support for the web browser that was instrumental in helping the company defeat Netscape.

    Internet Explorer has been on the scene for nearly 27 years, and was Microsoft’s answer to Netscape. Netscape helped popularize the web browser and was poised to help the browser become a platform of its own, one that could pose a threat to Windows. Microsoft went on the attack, using Internet Explorer, and ultimately won the first Browser Wars.

    Fast-forward more than two decades and Internet Explorer is barely a footnote, long since replaced with Microsoft Edge and eclipsed by Google Chrome, Apple’s Safari, and Netscape’s successor, Mozilla Firefox. Microsoft has been working to move users toward Edge, and has now ended all support for Internet Explorer.

    Read more: Microsoft Edge Has Worst Default Privacy Settings

    “After 25+ years of helping people use and experience the web, Internet Explorer (IE) is officially retired and out of support as of today, June 15, 2022,” writes Sean Lyndersay, General Manager, Microsoft Edge Enterprise. “To many millions of you, thank you for using Internet Explorer as your gateway to the internet.”

    For those who remember how awful it was to support Internet Explorer when creating websites, trying to make them compatible with the browser’s horrible standards support — goodbye and good riddance. You won’t be missed.

  • Microsoft Is Going Back to the ‘90s, Using Windows to Push Its Web Browser

    Microsoft Is Going Back to the ‘90s, Using Windows to Push Its Web Browser

    Microsoft is under fire for (once again) abusing its Windows platform to push its own web browser, reminiscent of its actions in the mid-90s.

    Microsoft’s history in the mid-90s was dominated by its browser war with Netscape. The company ultimately bundled Internet Explorer so tightly with Windows, that it was simply too difficult and inconvenient for most users to continue relying on Netscape.

    It seems Microsoft may be reverting back to that behavior and, in the process, is drawing sharp criticism from third-party browser makers, including Mozilla, Brave, Opera and Vivaldi. As The Verge points out, Windows 11 asks the user, when they install a third-party browser and try to open a link for the first time, which browser they want set as their default. However, unless the user selects “always use this app,” the default will remain unchanged. There’s also no fast and easy way to go back and do so if the user doesn’t get it right during that initial dialog.

    To make matters even worse, rather than providing a simple method to change the web browser in settings, Microsoft now forces users to select the browser they want to use for each and every one of the various filetypes that often comprise a website. That means the user has to set the default web browser for HTTP, HTTPS, HTM, HTML, XHT, XHTML, PDF, SHTML, SVG, WEBP and FTP.

    While users obviously may want to use a dedicated FTP or PDF client, every other one of those files should all be lumped together, handled by a single default browser.

    Even if a user goes through the tedious process of changing the default browser for each and every one of the necessary file types, it still won’t stop Windows from defaulting to Edge. A number of browser-based widgets will still open Edge regardless of the default setting.

    Inexplicably, Microsoft says this is what users want.

    “With Windows 11, we are implementing customer feedback to customize and control defaults at a more granular level, eliminating app categories and elevating all apps to the forefront of the defaults experience,” a Microsoft spokesperson told The Verge. “As evidenced by this change, we’re constantly listening and learning, and welcome customer feedback that helps shape Windows. Windows 11 will continue to evolve over time; if we learn from user experience that there are ways to make improvements, we will do so.”

    What Microsoft no doubt meant to say is: “We searched long and hard to find the most technologically masochistic users we could find, ones that love having their own technology fight against them, and based our decisions on their feedback.”

    There were a lot of great things about the ‘90s, but Microsoft’s behavior wasn’t one of them. The company should abandon this nonsense immediately.

  • Mitchell Baker Becomes Mozilla’s CEO

    Mitchell Baker Becomes Mozilla’s CEO

    Long-time chairwoman Mitchell Baker has officially taken the reigns as Mozilla’s next CEO.

    The organization’s previous CEO, Chris Beard, resigned at the end of 2019, leaving a vacancy in Mozilla’s leadership. Now, more than three months after Beard left, Baker is taking over the position.

    “I’m honored to become Mozilla’s CEO at this time. It’s a time of challenge on many levels, there’s no question about that,” Baker writes in a blog post. “Mozilla’s flagship product remains excellent, but the competition is stiff. The increasing vertical integration of internet experience remains a deep challenge. It’s also a time of need, and of opportunity. Increasingly, numbers of people recognize that the internet needs attention. Mozilla has a special, if not unique role to play here. It’s time to tune our existing assets to meet the challenge. It’s time to make use of Mozilla’s ingenuity and unbelievable technical depth and understanding of the ‘web’ platform to make new products and experiences. It’s time to gather with others who want these things and work together to make them real.”

    Baker has deep roots with both Mozilla and its predecessor, Netscape. She first joined Netscape in November 1994, as one of the company’s first employees in the legal department, and became general manager of the mozilla.org project within Netscape five years later. In 2001, she was let go by America Online, who had acquired Netscape in 1999. In 2003, she helped launch the Mozilla Foundation, and became the first CEO of its subsidiary, Mozilla Corporation, when it was launched in 2005.

    Given Baker’s long history with Mozilla, not to mention Netscape, she represents a solid choice to lead the organization amid tech’s changing landscape.

  • Netflix Might Become Part of Cable Packages

    At the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in San Francisco Tuesday, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings stated that he envisions cable TV evolving into an on-demand internet platform, and that Netflix will become just another cable provider. “It’s not in the short term, but it’s in the natural direction for us in the long term. Many (cable service providers) would like to have a competitor to HBO, and they would bid us off of HBO,” said Reed.

    Hastings went on to identify HBO’s Go service as being a a top competitor to Netflix, and downplayed what he refeered to as “copycat” competitors, naming Amazon and their Instant Video service. “It’s very easy for companies to over-estimate copycat competition and not see the real threat,” said Hastings, who went on to cite long-defunct internet browser Netscape – “You go back to 1995, and you talk to the Netscape sales force and ask them what their No. 1 competition is, and they’d say Spy Glass, which was taking a little market share from them at the time. But the real competition was Microsoft and bundling.”

    Hastings made his remarks on the same day HBO announced that Go would be available on Xbox Live on April 1st, the same day as the season premiere of HBO’s hit series Game of Thrones. Hastings also mentioned that in the Netflix focus on HBO’s evolution, producing original content is very relevant, along with pushing availability on multiple platforms. So, there might be a Netflix-produced series down the line.