Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: The focus is changing

Author:Eric Soroos
Posted:6/23/1999; 2:29:18 PM
Topic:Hidden failure of Win2k
Msg #:7745 (In response to 7731)
Prev/Next:7744 / 7746

Dave, the stagnation you see and feel in the browser market is a result of the shifting focus away from the central "web browser" and towards standards.

And the stagnation you feel is the web browsers developing without asking what the user really wants or needs.

They can implement all the cool standards in the world, but apparently they can't be bothered to do the simple things in a manner that people would like.

If you detect a hint of frustration, it's there.

I want something quick. Unfortunately, that means that the last browsers that feel quick enough are the version 3 ones. (Or NS4 on a linux box, but I'll stick to mac and win right now)

I want something that edits text. Unfortunately, that pretty much rules out the version 3 and 4 browsers.

I wants something that filters cookies. Either let me turn them off completely (why not ie4?) or let me set them on a site by site basis. i.e. userland == ok, doubleclick.net == bad. Ok I'm paranoid. But I like that.

I want a browser that when I type webmail, it looks through the dns tree and comes up with the machine on my network named webmail. (Mozilla fails this, it calls up www.webmail.com)

I want one that deals with font sizes intelligently. Don't hardlink the relative serif and monospace font sizes (msie). That forces a comprimise between legibility of the two types, where it should be possible to make both work properly. I would like to set a minimum and maximum type size that the browser will display. My eyes fatigue, so when a site insists on tightly set 9 point sans serif (infoworld?), I can't read more than a paragraph without clicking away.

I don't want something that freezes or crashes.

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