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[edit] Monoculture for worms?"The near-universal adoption of Internet Explorer has also created a monoculture which has widened the damage done by computer worms, which exploit software vulnerabilities to propagate themselves. The more machines exposing a given vulnerability, the more easily a worm will propagate." Given the fact that there has yet to be any significant IE "worm", does this really do the article justice? Blaster and Sasser spread without IE. Nearly every definition of the term "worm" indicates compromising a large number of machines without the users having to do anything. The spread of worms is facilitated most by allowing applications to masquerade as documents. Most exploits are based on the inability of users to quarantine active content prior to scanning for viruses as virus scanners only work if the virus is old enough to be catalogued. Few worms by comparison depend on browser specific bugs. Non-Microsoft browsers that do not check the Windows Internet Security settings in the registry prior to turning on Java and plug-ins also demonstrate serious security flaws that result from a failure to fully comply with external specification. There is plenty of blame for all concerned. Security issues have more to do with the fact that today's developer's are far too arrogant to check to see if what they are doing has been done before and find our what the problems were - before going ahead and repeating the screw-ups of history for the umpteen-millionth time... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.111.225.252 (talk) 08:28, 11 July 2009 (UTC) [edit] ChartGuys, the chart is completely miseading and bad. The percentage on the left only applies to IE/Win, otherwise it would look like Netscape still has a 90%+ share in the early 21st century. It tries to be both a pie chart showing area constrained into a rectangle, as well as a regular chart, and it does neither very well. Can someone come up with a non-hybrid version that sucks less and is more legible? I'll do it myself if someone posts a link to the initial data that led to the chart. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.33.109.95 (talk • contribs)
[edit] Mobile DevicesUnder "Other browser competition", someone who has a good grasp of the mobile devices browser market should flesh out that section. -- Limulus 13:00, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
SERIOUSLY???? I am not aware of safari being used on any other device than the ones mentioned. The devices dont support any other browser. There is no competition by or for safari in the mobile devices section. The part "is also a serious competitor." seems misleading to me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.126.155.29 (talk) 13:28, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] misc"the cause of the success" of computer worms might be a bit too strong. Maybe it should read "a major factor in the success" Lefty 22:49, 2004 Feb 24 (UTC) Re FrontPage: The current version (from 62.252.0.4) has a paragraph about about web designers not using "best viewed in Netscape" with an explanation that this was because of IE's "more complete support for web standards such as CSS" and obscures the original point about Microsoft's FrontPage producing IE-friendly HTML (at the expense of Netscape interoperability). I've reverted this comment once. In context, this is a list of advantages Microsoft exercised in the browser wars. IMO, releasing and promoting the use of a tool that generated HTML that favored one browser over another was one of the many subtle or not so subtle ways Microsoft used to kill Netscape. The effect (as was desired by Microsoft) was that some web designers stopped using "best viewed in Netscape". Could we perhaps move the bit about "best viewed in" to another place in the article and leave Microsoft's promotion of FrontPage in the list? Rick Block 14:14, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC) [edit]I pulled this...
Does anyone have a reliable source for these numbers? Also "widely said" by who? AlistairMcMillan 14:38, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Under the heading "The second browser war", I find the following to be extremely misleading:
Firefox 2.0 was released at the end of October 2006, meaning 0.69% was their market share at the end of their first week of release. Furthermore, the original article only included those stats to show that in a little over a year, Firefox 2.0 held 16% of the market share, so putting the 1 liner completely out of context in the article seems very misleading. —Preceding unsigned comment added by David510 (talk • contribs) 10:01, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
[edit] I.E. 6There has been an update to IE since the article was written. It was bundled with Win XP Service Pack 2
[edit] historyCan anyone substantiate the first and second paragraphs under history? These attribute specific motives to Microsoft that I don't know are verifiable, or even true. My impression (also probably not verifiable, and perhaps not true) is that Microsoft saw the web and the web browser as a potential threat to Windows as the dominant computer/user interface and therefore had to gain control of it (to limit its functionality and ensure the continued dominance of Windows). The point is if users spend most of their time in a browser, and browsers can run equally well on any OS, the OS becomes irrelevant. I think it's somewhat POV to make any claim about Microsoft's motives in this case (even, perhaps especially, direct quotes from Microsoft about their motives). My suggestion is to delete the entire second paragraph under history and delete the "Microsoft saw the success ..." clause from the first paragraph (leaving the sentence "Microsoft licensed Mosaic ..."). I think the facts are that Netscape was the defacto standard web browser and for whatever reason Microsoft decided to put them out of business. -- Rick Block 19:11, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC) How are acctual quotes NPOV? Removing this info would be NPOV. [edit] Pre-Browser WarsSince, outside of Wikipedia, the IE vs. Netscape wars is considered the first browser wars and the current browser wars with IE vs. Firefox is the second browsers wars, I think we should change
to
--mathwizxp 01:50, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC) [edit] IE vs Netscape - the takeup by users?Does any know what the takeup/takeover numbers for IE vs Netscape looked like in the 1990s, versus what the Firefox vs IE takeup/takeover numbers look like? I'm interested to see whether FF is grabbing market share more quickly or slowly that IE did when it first gained a serious foothold. --Richard@lbrc.org 16:25, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] ConsequencesBecause Internet Explorer has the word "Internet" in its name, inexperienced users are sometimes misled into believing that Internet Explorer is the Internet... To me, this paragraph seemed to be nothing more than unsupported speculation, with some advertisments thrown in for good measure. Can anyone offer a good reason to put it back? Cymsdale 19:37, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
--Planetary 22:49, 5 September 2006 (UTC) I might add that the use of generic descriptive branding of bundled products generally does induce in inexperienced users, the illusion that the product concerned has no competition. This lends itself to a merging of product and function. Internet Explorer is an interesting example, but anyone can take a survey at their workplace to find out how many people are not aware that other word processors exist apart from Word. The dividing line between operating system, application and data in user perception is in reality a very fuzzy line. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.111.225.252 (talk) 08:43, 11 July 2009 (UTC) [edit] It was Apache that killed Netscape business model not IISI removed
It was Apache that killed Netscape business model not IIS. According to Apache HTTP Server "When first released, Apache was the only viable open source alternative to the Netscape web server (currently known as Sun Java System Web Server). It has since evolved to rival other Unix-based web servers in terms of functionality and performance. Since April 1996 Apache has been the most popular HTTP server on the Internet."
That's simply not true. Sorry.
There was a CCK from Netscape that allowed ISP to configure and brand Netscape Navigator easily -- 62.178.136.129 16:56, 2 January 2007 (UTC) [edit] graph at top of articleHi. I notice the graph shown in this article doesn't cite the source of its data (nor in the description page on the commons wikipedia), therefore I've added a {{Fact}} tag until this is done. I have noticed some similar data, such as this, and I would be interested to see what sort of graph these numbers produce. I think it would be cool to have different shades of one colour for all the Netscape versions, and different shades of another colour for the IE versions. I would do this myself, if I had time. Any offers?! --Rebroad 10:56, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Picture creepThere's too many pictures in this article, to the point where the page looks cluttered. Is there a possibility that some can be removed? Inkbottle 00:53, 2 April 2007 (UTC) [edit] Browser Wars Project Link The link to "http://www.browser-war.org/index.php" really should be removed..... Look at the image, that's hardly a representitive sample! All in favour say "Ay!" GoddersUK 20:52, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Repetitive sentencesThe paragraph "The first browser war" and the sub-paragraph "Internet Explorer dominance" both include a similar sentence: "It was faster and it adopted the W3C's published specifications more faithfully than Netscape Navigator 4.0. Unlike Netscape, it provided the possibility for truly "dynamic" pages in which the flow of the text and images of the page could be altered after the page was loaded." Shouldn't it be changed? 154.20.151.165 04:17, 13 June 2007 (UTC) [edit] Best viewed with IE/Netscape logoWhere can I get one of those "Best viewed with..." logos?Astroview120mm 20:19, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Inclusion of Safari in 2nd browser wars and not OperaI don't even use Opera so don't call me an unhappy fanboy. But it seems unfair to me that the article seems to suggest that Safari just entered the browser war and therefore gets special mention within the 2nd war section but Opera, which has been around (on the windows platform) for longer and has greater or comparable market share, is not given a single mention within that section, but is instead shunted off into the "other browsers" section. I think in the interests of fairness some sort of discussion needs to be had as to what requirements need to be met by a browser to qualify it as a major player in the 2nd war. Something like minumum market share. Otherwise we could argue all day between different browser loyalists about whether or not a browser deserves mention. Ninj4 13:18, 11 July 2007 (UTC) Opera has been around a lot longer you are correct but Safari has a (comperativly) much larger market share. Source: http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=0 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.181.144.137 (talk) 23:42, 20 February 2008 (UTC) [edit] PSPAs far as I'm aware the psp browser is Netfront. Definitely not mozilla as the article claims. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.37.231.136 (talk) 23:41, 12 September 2007 (UTC) [edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Firefox 2.0.0.6 on Ubuntu.png Image:Firefox 2.0.0.6 on Ubuntu.png is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use. Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page. If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. BetacommandBot (talk) 06:38, 19 December 2007 (UTC) [edit] Opera 3rd on Windows?In the "Windows" section of "Other Browser Competition" it's claimed that " Opera is the third most popular browser on Windows" and is not sourced. I've not been able to find any market share statistics that only show WIndows browsers so i havn't changed it but i would argue that with nearly 6x more marketshare (overall) Safari is likely to be the third on Windows as well. Does anyone have statistics to either prove or disprove this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.181.144.137 (talk) 19:37, 21 February 2008 (UTC) [edit] CleanupI've had a bit of a go-over on the page as it was a bit of a disaster, but more sources are required, its lacking some detail (it's a little biased towards IE IMO) and the second browser war is extremely badly written - it needs to explain better how market-share shifted, how there was a movement towards supporting FireFox (and its features such as extensions and IE's security reputation which led to its takeup) leading to the reformation of the IE team and the fact there has been an increased push towards W3Cs standards rather than browser-centric code. There should be more on the antitrust action and eventual settlement, and the lack of mention of IE5's incorrect box model or ActiveX also bugs me. -93.96.212.203 (talk) 01:32, 3 August 2008 (UTC) [edit] all over again?It seams to me (but may be hard to cite) that the browser wars are starting up again. It started with the release of Firefox 2 at the same time as IE 7. Then again (I may be wrong) with Firefox 3 and Opera 9.5. Now it seams that IE 8, Opera 10, Safari 4 and Firefox 4 may be released close together (though Firefox may be quite a while in the future). Also browsers seam to be borrowing aspects of other browsers, like firefoxs awesome bar on IE8 and Opera 9.5. Is IE8 becoming standards compliant to win the competition back? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yhulkdsfdd (talk • contribs) 07:07, 29 August 2008 (UTC) [edit] Google Browser (chrome)In addition to the above, google is launching a browser called chrome, aimed at competing against firefox and ie. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7593106.stm Yhulkdsfdd (talk) 17:58, 2 September 2008 (UTC) [edit] Chrome major competitor?This sentence in the opening paragraph seems skewed to me: "The term is used to denote ... the competition between the dominating Internet Explorer and several emerging browsers that has been since 2003, most notably including Mozilla Firefox and not until recently, Google Chrome." While Chrome may someday be worthy of being mentioned in such a prominent place in the article, I think it's very premature at this point - as of this writing it's only been in open beta for two days. It's just too early to say whether or not it will leave a significant mark on the Browser Wars. Arsivis (talk) 05:01, 4 September 2008 (UTC) Merchantability is more important than market share and this is what makes Chrome a major competitor. Chrome does a better job of rendering, having passed the acid 3 test 100% - a feat achieved by few other browsers. If a browser does not function substantially as documented (which is exactly what acid 2 and acid 3 test) then it's not even in the same market. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.111.225.252 (talk) 08:50, 11 July 2009 (UTC) [edit] Relativity of browser statisticsI have not found any subject in the article about the relativity of browser statistics. There are many ways of measuring the browser market shares and as many way to ditsort them. I'm referring to an article on http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/nostats.html to know what I'm talking about. A paragraph should be dedicated to this matter when it comes to brower wars. Bxlbjorn (talk) 11:49, 6 September 2008 (UTC) [edit] Image copyright problem with Image:Internet Explorer 1.0.pngThe image Image:Internet Explorer 1.0.png is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check
This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --03:17, 16 September 2008 (UTC) [edit] GoalsMaybe this is a dumb question, but what is the advantage of winning the browser war? Does is bring in revenue? I can't really see how. If someone has a good answer, it's probably worth adding the article. 67.193.131.167 (talk) 22:13, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Both companies (Microsoft and Netscape) used free browsers to leverage their not-free server software. In those days, many companies thought they could own the whole business but didn't realize that the internet was more important than the back-room servers and the businesses they supported. What was worse is that MS used browser-bloat to compensate for bad pages containing non-compliant HTML (hey, our browser will render more pages than yours). After MS won the browser war, they did almost nothing with their lead (which makes me think that putting Netscape out of business might have been part of their original intention). When Netscape was on the chopping block with some of the business going to AOL, someone (I can't remember who) got the bright idea of putting the Netscape's rendering engine into the public domain as part o the Mozilla Foundation. Everyone using Windows on a PC thought this was a waste of time. However, everyone using any kind of UNIX operating system realized this was their only hope to continuing surfing. As everyone already knows, Mozilla is the basis for many alternate browsers including Firefox. Today, I personally know many professional web page publishers who first develop/test with Firefox and then switch to IE to fix up all the cross-browser issues. To do a good job you've got to check with all browsers and this brings up the modern point of view: 10 years ago their was no Amazon.com or eBay so maybe a company could think they could own the whole business. Today, the people who develop cross-browser support for these sites are (in my opinion) tortured souls as well as geniuses. Thank god MS now has a plan to get IE8 more compliant but they probably won't be 100% finished until IE9. --Neilrieck (talk) 16:55, 15 March 2009 (UTC) The answer may be simple, but it's actually the smartest question anyone's ever bothered to ask about the browser wars. The advantage of winning the browser wars was the ability to ignore the World Wide Web Consortium, dictate web standards directly through browser technology, and thereby dominate the web editing and content management market. Frontpage and Expressionweb typically bring in several hundred dollars per license and that is what drives the push towards market segmentation. Market segmentation backfired on Apple/Macintosh in the 80's and 90's and it backfired so badly on Netscape (who all but ignored CSS in favour of a proprietary feature) that it put them out of the race. If Microsoft's seemingly standard corporate strategies really cut off Netscape's air supply, Mozilla and Firefox would never have been able to take their first breath. However, Mozilla succeeded by correcting the errors of Netscape - and instead of trying to monopolise the development market, they focused standards compliance. DHTML, VBScript, VML, ActiveX, MSHTML, ASP, .NET, XAML, etc are all examples of new market segments in the continuing battle for developer dollars, but the smart money will always be on universally recognised standards (such as XML, CSS 2.1, HTML 4.01, and XHTML 1.0 at the time of writing) - because only full compliance here will connect the developer with the broadest market. With much of XML functionality witheld from IE8 (eg. correct DTD application), it would seem that Microsoft has learned little from the self destruction of Netscape. They've literally given Firefox (which can use the DTD to determine how to present an SVG file) another chunk of market share on a silver platter. What do you think will happen as developers begin to require the use of high definition scalable and mathematically compatible formats such as SVG? I can see the ALT text now: "To view this comparative graph of atmospheric CO2 concentration, global mean temperature, and mass extinction rates over the Phanerozoic; download XYZ non-MS browser"...? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.111.225.252 (talk) 09:43, 11 July 2009 (UTC) [edit] 1st broswer warFirst browser war is ***wrong***, that's the second browser war. The first one was called the Mosaic Wars, and Netscape won that one (IIRC, this was around NS 2.0 or 1.1N) and some of the competitors were TEXT-based browsers 70.51.8.158 (talk) 09:18, 19 September 2008 (UTC) [edit] Google Chrome not developed to be the most used browser"Their goal is to compete with Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox and eventually become the most used web browser." is a wrong statement as Google doesn't mention that anywhere on its site about why it developed Google Chrome[4].
Hence i am removing the same - Đõc §aмέέЯ 10:23, 29 October 2008 (UTC) I disagree. I think that of course google is trying to make theirs the most used browser. It may not be their explicit and stated goal, but still, as it said in TechRepublic, they don't want to rely on the continued goodnature of IE and Mozilla. Google would be ecstatic if everyone on earth used their browser, as would every company developing their browser. Ever additional person who uses chrome is an additional person who is using all of google's services. By the way, Firefox ROCKS! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lunixer (talk • contribs) 00:50, 8 January 2009 (UTC) [edit] I don't think this article CAN be neutralHello to all. My question is, is there ANY way to make this article meet neutrality standards?? Honestly, the content of this article is such that it is nearly impossible to talk in neutrality. Everybody has their opinion on this subject, and it is pretty much impossible to set aside your prejudices, no matter how hard you try. It seems that the person that wrote this article is clearly pro-IE. He/she/it spends at least 1/2 the article talking about Internet Explorer's total dominance. Just slightly prejudiced? Nameless9123 (talk) 19:35, 28 April 2009 (UTC) Well, if s/he\it spent half the article complaining about IE's dominance, or on the other hand lauding IE for it's dominance, that would not be neutral. Netscape self destructed and a rather singed Mozilla emerged from the flames. That IE became dominant in the meantime is a fact of life. The market share attrition rate of IE is also a fact of life that is even more prominant in the article. This much is neutral. However, the author blames Microsoft for doing things to cause the demise of Netscape. Is that neutral? Netscape failed to adhere to external specifications (such as CSS), and that and not Microsoft is what ultimately sent them packing. Ultimately it is the issue of standards compliance in particular, which is driving the present attrition rate of IE's market share, because developers are realising that their market share depends a great deal on coverage - and coverage is governed by standards. To me, this is neutral. To someone with an axe to grind, it may be positively actionable. This leaves of with the question of factual accuracy. When an article is reduced to the bare facts, with neither omission, repetition, nor spin, it cannot be other than neutral, no matter who or how many claim it isn't.58.111.225.252 (talk) 10:48, 11 July 2009 (UTC) [edit] HyperboleFrom the Consequences section: "Moreover, this major security hole constitutes the worst of the browser wars legacy. It is a veritable unexploded shell that remains buried in every browser on the market." This strikes me as very unencyclopedic language, in fact it's sheer hyperbole. There's more examples through the article —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.108.106.146 (talk) 12:38, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Removed paragraph from Browser Wars 1, 'Consequences'I have removed this paragraph, having first tried to edit it and then to find some (any) verification for the points raised. Apart from the spelling, it used 'statistics' that don't seem to exist, emotive, unencyclopedic language about 'unexploded shells' and was completely uncited.
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