Re: Re: Microsoft
By: poindexter FORTRAN to Tracker1 on Sat Oct 22 2022 08:57:00

Tracker1 wrote to Nightfox <=-

quirks these days. NN 4.x was such hot garbage to work with.

I'm running SeaMonkey on the BBS now, feels akin to Netscape Communicator 4.x bit with a modern rendering engine.

Yeah, it was the rendering that was the biggest issue... was writing web-ui charting and literally had to cover the entire screen when doing so, or it would send someone into a seizure with the flickering. IIRC NN4.07 was required support for the company I was at around 1999 or so, as Novel was a major client and it was their "standard" browser internally.


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quirks these days. NN 4.x was such hot garbage to work with.

I'm running SeaMonkey on the BBS now, feels akin to Netscape Communic 4.x bit with a modern rendering engine.

Yeah, it was the rendering that was the biggest issue... was writing web-ui charting and literally had to cover the entire screen when doing so, or it would send someone into a seizure with the flickering. IIRC NN4.07 was required support for the company I was at around 1999 or so,
as Novel was a major client and it was their "standard" browser internally.

I think the moment when Netscape was rewritten into Java killed the adoption completely. It was NN6 if I recall. Looked fancy from UI/UX perspective as we call it today, but slow as hell and unbearable for daily use comparing to sleek IE integrated with the OS.

That was also one of the reasons for fanboyism and complaints against MSFT that there is no way browser can be so fast unless put into lower levels of the OS, which was unfair. But I believe NN fucked up implementation and choosing Java as front-end was way premature by the end of 90s.

-h1

... Xerox Alto was the thing. Anything after we use is just a copy.

Re: Re: Microsoft
By: hollowone to Tracker1 on Tue Mar 21 2023 03:52 am

I think the moment when Netscape was rewritten into Java killed the adoption completely. It was NN6 if I recall. Looked fancy from UI/UX perspective as we call it today, but slow as hell and unbearable for daily use comparing to sleek IE integrated with the OS.

i used netscape and i don't even remember that happening. i looked it up and it said it was using the gecko engine.

i think people ditched nutscrape long before 6 if that really happened.
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i used netscape and i don't even remember that happening. i looked it up and it said it was using the gecko engine.

THen perhaps memory plays tricks with me. it somehow resonates with me that six (that with aqua blue ui and big six in the background layer of the welcome web page it was starting with, I think animated as well) was implemented in java or strongly integrated with java.

Regardless, it was slow beyond acceptance on my computer at that time

MR> MR> i think people ditched
nutscrape long before 6 if that really happened.

I liked it up to 4, for sure. It was my browser on early linux and win 3.11/32. My early Internet access memories is Netscape and MIRC :>

-h1

... Xerox Alto was the thing. Anything after we use is just a copy.

Re: Re: Microsoft
By: hollowone to MRO on Thu Mar 23 2023 12:53 pm

i used netscape and i don't even remember that happening. i looked
it up and it said it was using the gecko engine.

THen perhaps memory plays tricks with me. it somehow resonates with me that six (that with aqua blue ui and big six in the background layer of the welcome web page it was starting with, I think animated as well) was implemented in java or strongly integrated with java.

I used Netscape for a long time as well, and I don't remember hearing about it being ported to Java. And with that version of Netscape, I don't recall needing to install the Java runtime to use it.

Nightfox

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Re: Re: Microsoft
By: hollowone to MRO on Thu Mar 23 2023 12:53 pm

I liked it up to 4, for sure. It was my browser on early linux and win 3.11/32. My early Internet access memories is Netscape and MIRC :>

i used the mosiac browser with compuserv
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I used Netscape for a long time as well, and I don't remember hearing about it being ported to Java. And with that version of Netscape, I
don't recall needing to install the Java runtime to use it.

Yeah.. I keep searching for some reference, but it seems that my mind's boggled. Apologies for confusion. But still I remember it was slow like hell, that sticks.

-h1

... Xerox Alto was the thing. Anything after we use is just a copy.

hollowone wrote to Nightfox <=-

I used Netscape for a long time as well, and I don't remember hearing about it being ported to Java. And with that version of Netscape, I
don't recall needing to install the Java runtime to use it.

Yeah.. I keep searching for some reference, but it seems that my mind's boggled. Apologies for confusion. But still I remember it was slow like hell, that sticks.

I don't think it was ported to Java, but Netscape devceloped Javascript
(no relation) to extend what was mostly static web sites way back when.



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Re: Re: Microsoft
By: hollowone to Tracker1 on Tue Mar 21 2023 03:52:00

But I believe NN fucked up implementation and choosing Java as
front-end was way premature by the end of 90s.

To be clear, Java isn't JavaScript. The JS UI was started with NN6 using an XML UI templating language called XUL. Riff on Ghostbusters, "There is no data. There is only XUL!"

XUL itself had a lot of really cool features, and by 2002 most PCs were more than fast enough. There was a standalone Application toolkit called XULRunner and quite few third party apps used it... Mozilla kind of left it to die though, and eventually nuked XUL support and left it to die. It was pretty much Electron a decade and a half before Electron existed.

They also added JS support for E4X (ecmascript for xml), the only other implementation was in ActionScript 3 for Flash/Flex.


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Re: Re: Microsoft
By: MRO to hollowone on Thu Mar 23 2023 00:22:30

I think the moment when Netscape was rewritten into Java killed the
adoption completely. It was NN6 if I recall. Looked fancy from UI/UX
perspective as we call it today, but slow as hell and unbearable for

i used netscape and i don't even remember that happening. i looked it up and it said it was using the gecko engine.

Gecko is Mozilla's (formerly Netscape) HTML rendering engine... XUL was the templating language used for the UI/Chrome around that (the browser's UI, not the web page). It was also JavaScript, not Java.


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Tracker1 wrote to hollowone <=-

To be clear, Java isn't JavaScript. The JS UI was started with NN6
using an XML UI templating language called XUL. Riff on Ghostbusters, "There is no data. There is only XUL!"

XUL itself had a lot of really cool features, and by 2002 most PCs were more than fast enough. There was a standalone Application toolkit
called XULRunner and quite few third party apps used it... Mozilla kind
of left it to die though, and eventually nuked XUL support and left it
to die. It was pretty much Electron a decade and a half before
Electron existed.

They also added JS support for E4X (ecmascript for xml), the only other implementation was in ActionScript 3 for Flash/Flex.

This is bringing up bad memories of HotJava, the java browser for
Solaris.




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But I believe NN fucked up implementation and choosing Java as front-end was way premature by the end of 90s.

To be clear, Java isn't JavaScript. The JS UI was started with NN6
using an XML UI templating language called XUL. Riff on Ghostbusters, "There is no data. There is only XUL!"

I knew the bell wasn't ringing far from truth. Thanks for pointing me to the right waters. I'd not mistake java with javascript, perhaps my memory resonated with the wrong echo from the beginning.

I know XUL, it was pitched by Mozilla years after NN collapsed as something that may help Javascript conquer desktop app development. It never resonated though.

But that makes sense to me, if XUL predecessor as Wikipedia claims developed initially by Netscape Communications in around 1997 was responsible for NN6 rendering and I experienced it around 1999/2000 with my Celeron 300Mhz, no brainer it was slow as hell.

Now I even found right reference regarding this XUL thing to impact performance on slower machine at the time of NN6 release.

Mystery solved.

-h1

... Xerox Alto was the thing. Anything after we use is just a copy.

Re: Re: Microsoft
By: hollowone to Tracker1 on Sun Apr 02 2023 01:11 pm

I know XUL, it was pitched by Mozilla years after NN collapsed as something that may help Javascript conquer desktop app development. It never resonated though.

But that makes sense to me, if XUL predecessor as Wikipedia claims developed initially by Netscape Communications in around 1997 was responsible for NN6 rendering and I experienced it around 1999/2000 with my Celeron 300Mhz, no brainer it was slow as hell.

Turns out, XUL was kind of just ahead of its time. Nowadays, there's a booming business in desktop apps based on Electron, which is essentially just HTML/JS/CSS web apps with some enhanced APIs and backend resources.

It's also kind of why Apple's Webkit took off rather than Mozilla's Gecko: Where Webkit was made to be easily embeddable into other apps, Gecko & XUL kind of assumed you'd build your apps *inside* it as a framework.

So, when it turned out that the world really wanted an embedded web view component rather than to buy into a whole app framework, Mozilla kind of lost the contest there.

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Re: Re: Microsoft
By: hollowone to Tracker1 on Sun Apr 02 2023 13:11:00

To be clear, Java isn't JavaScript. The JS UI was started with NN6
using an XML UI templating language called XUL. Riff on
Ghostbusters, "There is no data. There is only XUL!"

I knew the bell wasn't ringing far from truth. Thanks for pointing me to the right waters. I'd not mistake java with javascript, perhaps my memory resonated with the wrong echo from the beginning.

Yeah... I worked with it a bit, and enjoyed it for what it offered at the time.

Timely blog post..
https:/crisal.io/words/2023/03/30/xul-layout-is-gone.html

I know XUL, it was pitched by Mozilla years after NN collapsed as something that may help Javascript conquer desktop app development. It never resonated though.

Yeah, it was ahead of its' time, considering how popular electron is today.

But that makes sense to me, if XUL predecessor as Wikipedia claims developed initially by Netscape Communications in around 1997 was responsible for NN6 rendering and I experienced it around 1999/2000 with my Celeron 300Mhz, no brainer it was slow as hell.

Now I even found right reference regarding this XUL thing to impact performance on slower machine at the time of NN6 release

Yeah, it was very bad before 2000 or so, but on anything over 1ghz was pretty decent. On today's hardware you wouldn't even notice.


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