Compuserve 7 Ships with GeckoTuesday April 16th, 2002Both c|net and Slashdot are reporting that Compuserve 7 has shipped, and AOL used Gecko, rather than Trident (IE), to power the layout of content. Compuserve's content is completely web-based, so AOL using Gecko as the layout engine shows their confidence in it. Check out the c|net story or if you have Compuserve, grab 7.0. Using it now (since beta, actually). The UI is ugly as sin. Looking at the 6.0 UI, you'd think they were actually trying to drive people away. I'll try to post a screenshot if I can get MyWebPage to behave. if you can't get "MyWebPage" working, you can email them to junk@transientweb.com and I will post them for you. Here they are. Don't say I didn't warn you! In the words of doron: "<Kovu> ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!" http://mywebpage.netscape.com/Kovu401/cs7.jpg http://mywebpage.netscape.com/Kovu401/cs7+gecko.jpg the obvious question... what version or date of creation of Gecko is being used? and how often are they likely to spit out updated versions? (surely someone from Compuserve who actually knows can tell us) I believe it's the same version of gecko as shipping in the latest Netscape release. So that would put it somewhere on the 0.9.4 branch. --Asa perhaps the Netscape support people would have to give support for the Compuserve client (like, via training the Compuserve people), and thus making sense to keep parity between Compuserve and Netscape releases instead of the madness of understanding where-its-at for multiple versions of software (as Netscape have had to do for the 6.0/6.1/6.2 moving target). and if so, perhaps they'll release updates in keeping with Netscape's updates This is the one of the same screenshots I posted above showing the user agent info: http://mywebpage.netscape.com/Kovu401/cs7+gecko.jpg the obvious question... what version or date of creation of Gecko is being used? and how often are they likely to spit out updated versions? (surely someone from Compuserve who actually knows can tell us) It's easy to answer from Kovu's screen shot. It's based on 0.9.4.2. The same (or about same) tree Netscape uses for the updated Netscape 6.1.x . For us learning about Gecko/Mozilla, what does UI stand for and what is UI? Thanks! Well, a very useful answer, pplwong <g> As pplwong said, UI stands for "User Interface". Most software, not just Mozilla, has a UI. It's the part that interacts with the user. For example, if you are using Mozilla, the UI is the menus across the top (File, Edit, etc.) the buttons, the Sidebar, the tabs etc. For good old DOS, the UI was merely some text ("c:\>"). Think of a link: The underlined blue text is the UI, the part that finds the linked webpage isn't. Someone had to sit down and design the UI: e.g. Should links look different? Bold? Look like a button? Shoud the word be the link, or should it have a superscript, footnote-like icon? Because links, and the web in general, were so intuitively designed, everybody's grandmother can use it. Many software programs with the most powerful features have difficult UI's that most people don't have time to figure out (e.g. Unix). If the user can't figure out how to use the feature, it might as well not be there. HTH. Personally, I think it's great that these questions are starting to appear. I also hope I haven't been trolled. "Many software programs with the most powerful features have difficult UI's that most people don't have time to figure out (e.g. Unix)." Huh? I'm posting this from a *nix machine with a beautiful and very easily to use UI. (My mom writes her letters with more ease on this machine than on the windows box). *nix UI's aren't more difficult than Win/Mac UI's. And if you are speaking about the console, well that's definitly easier to use and better documented than the Windows registry... If you're a regular joe user, Unix has a terribly unintuitive UI (excepting Mac OS X). Sure, your mom writes her letters real easily. That's the UI of the word processor you're talking about, not that of Unix. Can your mom install an application as simply as she can on Windows? Say Mozilla for instance? Will she be able to put the Mozilla icon on her Panel, etc.? Will she know how to upgrade glibc if she needs to for a new app? As for the comparison with the Windows Registry: Most users don't mess with the registry, so that's not even relevant. That's like saying "this bicycle is a lot easier to learn to drive than this 747." "If you're a regular joe user, Unix has a terribly unintuitive UI" I'll bite here.. it all comes down to what you are used to. Windows users find Mac and UN*X interfaces unintuitive. Mac users find Windows and UN*X interfaces unintuitive. UN*X users find Mac and Windows interfaces unintuitive. They are all inconsistent, they all have their faults, they all are really intuitive only if you are already familiar with them. Find someone with no computing experience and site them down in front of any of them, they will have roughly the same amount of difficulty. IMHO, of course. BTW, I doubt your mum can add additonal icons to the windows start menu, or upgrade from WinXP service pack three, either. As for the comparison about upgrading your OS, it's not even relevant to a UI discussion.. ;) Installing Software easily? Are we talking about the same Windows with every program a different Installer which asks too many questions? Not to talk about uninstalling anything (which doesn't really uninstall everything in most cases) Clicking on a link to the desired package on it's webspace. The normal open dialogue pops up and I've just to click ok. It's downloaded and the package manager (like kpackage) pops up where I've just to click on install. Is this difficult? Adding a button to the panel: right click on the panel/Add/Button/your_application if it's a KDE application or panel/Add/Non-KDE-Application and just pointing to the file (which you have to do on windows every time) |