[sclug] MOzilla and mail

[John Dickson]

13/01/2003 09:11:04, Bernd Becker 
<bernd.becker at metoffice.com> wrote:

>Hello!
>
>I am wondering, why is Mozilla in SUSE 8.1 comming 
without the mail
>(messanger ) tool?
>There is the browser and the editor.

[snip stuff about Galeon, Konqueror]

>I downloaded  Netscape (the latest 16.2 Mb)

[snip]
>What would YOU expect from an out of the box 
Installation?
>SHould this not all be there per se?
>

The Mozilla project team is constantly re-iterating 
that Mozilla was never intended as a full featured 
"out-of the box" browser with all the usual 
accoutrements such as mail readers etc. The Mozilla 
project was explicitly set up to develop a set of 
open-source core technologies which could be used, 
and extended, by others to build the sort of 
platform-independent Internet Explorer look-alike 
which everyone was asking for.  This was why they 
were, and still are, funded by AOL when they bought 
out the browser side of Netscape Corp.

The versions of Netscape built on top of Mozilla 
releases are put together by AOL with the specific 
intention of
a) Getting AOL off their dependency on Internet 
Explorer on Windoze platforms
b) Locking in their installed base of naive home 
users within their proprietary commercial 
information system. As such they have been very 
clunky and not of great use to anyone else.

If you want a good fully functioning browser within 
many extra features including a very adequate mail 
client then use Opera ( http://www.opera.com )

This is effectively platform independent as there 
are versions for Linux and most other versions of 
UNIX, and all the extant flavours of Windoze and 
MacOS . It has a pretty small footprint, is fast, 
and is highly standards compliant( including 
validating and rendering XML files directly.

There is a free version which AFAIK is also included 
in the Suse8.1 distribution.  It is supported by 
banner ads which are pretty easy to ignore, or you 
can pay $19 to switch them off.  This is hardly 
going to break the bank, and is very good value for 
money considering the amount of development effort 
that has gone into it.

We have been using Opera for two years now and I 
would never want to go back to anything else.


****************************

John Dickson  johnd at cavcomp.co.uk 

Caversham Computer Services Ltd
1A Kidmore Road
Caversham
Reading
RG4 7LR

Tel: +44 (0)118 954 3166  Fax: +44 (0)118 954 3199
http://www.cavcomp.co.uk/