COMMENTARY


An Opinion of
   John B. Moss
   30 September 1997

All opinions are those of the author, not necessarily
shared by the Online Writer. If you have a differing
opinion we would like to hear about it.


The raging war between browsers (Netscape and IE) is holding all of us hostage. Rather than work to resolve 'better' HTML principles and consistency of appearance and enhanced features that all can benefit from, these two huge companies are spending megabucks in a race to win market dominance. This is the same market where, for example, we get the message 'An illegal ...Contact the vendor'. (Pet peeve: why not capture this info to a log-file and transmit this file for technical analysis after reboot? Definitely should be considered as an alternative to having US write the data down somehow, remember the situation, and somehow communicate all this to someone who cares. Perhaps, the same someone who is currently working on competetive marketing?)

As long as they choose to ignore both the existing customer base and the potential for defining a standard they would not only share but enthusiastically help to create, BOTH companies are guilty of customer abuse. And we can do nothing about it! The issue of 'Who will survive' should be directed to 'How to survive while providing quality products and services while maintaining faith with our customers'. An IE-user is not likely to drop everything and go to Netscape (or vice versa). But to determine that in order to do so will necessitate waging a war which would drive the competitor out of business is a mis-directed effort that makes all of us civilian casualties.


© 1997-1998   John B. Moss