Netscape roasting on an open fire

Hands up who remembers Mosaic, the first ever graphical browser? Well its come along way from their and eveloved into Netscape, however if you ask Microsoft they would probably say it isn't any better. While reading Microsoft's MSDN Magazine the other day I relised that Microsoft must drill their hate for their competions such as Netscape, Yahoo, or in this case Apple, into their employee's heads.

But the things these days it that songs which start like the following:

Netscape roasting on an open fire
Apple begging on its knee's
Photo popping up on time magazine
yes Bill Gates dreams day likes these

Which the song I was sent last week did, are no longer the stuff of over stretched imaginations. Its all perfectly true now. But the annoying thing is that most of the technology that is getting crushed by Microsoft is better than the stuff they are bringing out. Mac's are better than PC's. You cannot argue. While PC's were running DOS, Mac's had a GUI interface. Where as my pc with Windows ME crashes on average every few hours (including the time its not on because I'm sleeping, at work, etc!) Apples can go on and on. However that's not of course what Microsoft claim.

However the fact is that I am saying all this and yet I am an Internet Explorer user. I do also have Opera 6.05 installed but the fact is that my most used browser is Internet Explorer. This is whets killing Netscape. I would use Netscape except for the compatibility problems. And this is how Microsoft are crushing them. They invent new standards (which usually suck) and stick them in Internet Explorer while Netscape does not support them.

However the changes of us actually getting a standard for this just isn't going to happen any time soon. I would bet that we will be having this conversion. Someone in Internet Magazine or a Computer Buyer column will be moaning about the compatibility problems he is constantly up against when using Netscape to access the Internet through is Mac. Why can't we break out of this circle?