[ Thanks to Kelly
McNeill for this link. ]
“This week has been very interesting for web users. Netscape has
made a pre-release version of Netscape 6 available, and Internet
Explorer 5.5 has come under attack from the World Wide Web
consortium (W3C).”
“Most people are looking at these news items as another
round in an old battle, i.e. which browser will rule the web.
To a certain extent this may be true, but IE will dominate the
computer market as long as Windows sits on top of the OS market.
If you take a step back and look down the road, you’ll see this
is the opening salvo in a new battle for domination of the Internet
appliance market. Both players are approaching this battle
from different angles.”
“Let’s look at Netscape’s approach. Although the release of a
new browser is welcome news, the real news is the Gecko engine.
Gecko is smaller, faster, and more nimble than any other HTML
engine out there. Even with all of the add-on’s Netscape added to
version 6, it’s still only half the size of Communicator 4.7, and
less than 1/3 the size of Internet Explorer. What’s significant
about this, you ask? The significance is most evident to the
Internet appliance market. Get rid of the add-ons to Netscape 6 and
you have a lean, mean, browsing machine that will drastically cut
the hardware requirements for internet appliances.”