Anyone care what I think?

[Patrick M. Havens]

On Sep. 17 97, 04:29 PDT, "Timothy J Luoma" <luomat at peak.org> wrote:

> My reasoning: if someone else was seeing the same crash on a
> regular basis, I'd want to know about it.  Because I didn't know
> at the time that the 3.x code was split from the 2.5 code, I had
> no way of knowing that the 2.7 bug reports were not going to be
> all that helpful in 3.x.

Plus quite often a bug is passed on. Even in start from scratch
programs. As a programmer gets into doing it one way and continues
with each program... or rewrite.

> OmniWeb rarely crashes.  When it does, I'm very surprised, and I
> guess my mind took a short break.

I beg to differ. I get crashes quite often. Many times as we worked
our way through betas and finals... And yes it did crash when the
animation was turned on. But still there have been a few that don't
look to be and are quite obviously not contributed to the animation
but to something else. I'd be doing ftp or have multiple pages
downloading on a copy of OmniWeb that doesn't have the animated
gif omniiamge in it.

And truthfully I've gotten to enjoy the animated version better
because I can visit more sites now (Before I couldn't see where to
go... animated gif into an imagemap or i'd get a blank image...
and not know where it led..... more than once I actually brought
up NetSurfer because I'd be able to see where I was going.) And it
does the more lock up and then sudden die, which is better than
it's usual straight crash because I can get warned, and write down
URLS fast.

> I've sent ever crash report to omniweb2 with as much info as I
> could.

I've sent in a couple... But generally getting told that it's my
set up and that I should use a crappy Mail program or lame terminal
program instead of the one I like.

> I will happily continue to support OmniGroup, even if they decide
> to start *selling* single-user copies of OmniWeb.

> NetScape support sucks rocks.  They don't want to hear from people
> who are using the academic version of their browser, which you
> STILL have to pay for (I think) and which is not fully featured
> (OW is not crippled, even for the single-user license).

Well I don't know why you have had bad luck. I get responses back
and the problems get fixed soon after I write about them. Plus they
also have people on a couple of my web design mailing lists and if
bugs or problems with the browsers pop up they pass it on to the
fix it guys... And THEY fix it.

Plus Netscape isn't crippled or a demo. If you get it for academic
purposes then they get a tax write off and a few more customers
who will fell more apt to pay for it later... Because it's something
they're used too. They give the same copy and build to the paying
customer that they give to the non paying customer.

One of many things that bugs me is that even though OW is a tenth
the size of NS OW is extremely slow. Plus why hasn't anyone ever
fixed the history, there have been complaints that if you hit back
to fast you'll wipe it for a while now and plus you can't go back
to a certain page unless you bring up linear history and create a
whole new window... Interface builder does allow you to create drop
down menus... play with it. And lately I've run into  the DNS
problem. Where site are down because for some reason or other the
nameserver for it is down and it can't find the server. So no matter
if it came right back up.... if you try again it remembers that
you couldn't find it. And then you have to restart OW to wipe that
'feature'. And why was such a important feature like ftp taken off
the 2.6 browser anyway? Do you know how many times it got annoying
when I had to pull the URL zap down to Stuart to use ncftp to get
the file. Also why is the stop button broken. It seems like a simple
idea. Do a straight kill of all

It's funny to go to your site where you compare yourself to Netscape
2.0 and when you can't do what it does. Animated gifs... "well its
broken.... Get OPENSTEP 4.02", Javascript.... "Well since there is
no standard..." Then what standard is W3, Netscape and Microsoft
following? You hear that Microsft is Javascript 1.1 compatible and
Netscape is Javascript 1.2 compatible... (and I've run across other
browsers with similar notation). Yes you have to call for J-Script
instead of Javascript for IE. But that's about it.... (that and
the fact that certain features aren't found in IE version.) Also
Netscape and Internet Explorer at least can successfully do imagemaps.
Not read them off just enough to drive you a little batty searching
for the correct place. Let alone not having the ability to right
click for the URL.

Things we've asked for and heard lame responses like Borderless
frames.... "Not needed... it's new anyway..." Well first off we've
had two successive Netscape browsers with the feature and it's
standard with IE, both soon to be competitors... And it is a nice
FEATURE. Also what about CSS (Since I'm going off :-)> are you
going to support it. It's in the documentation... Other browsers
(A LOT of other browsers) support it. And will there be a patch
for OW 2.x users.

And as a quick note... why don't you do patches that fix and replace
what needs fixing and replacing? Instead of having to get a whole
new browser?
---
Signed, Patrick M. Havens (aka. The Bookworm)
email->phavens at nvc.cc.ca.us  URL->http://nvc.cc.ca.us/~phavens
"We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are."  Anais Nin
                   (MIME and NeXT mail capable)