The Coming Domination of Gecko

I spent a lot of time this week using Netscape 7.2 and Opera 7.54, and I've come to the conclusion that there's just no reason to use anything but Firefox and Thunderbird anymore. Tomorrow I'm going to download and install Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 6, but it really is academic at this point, even if there are 400+ bug fixes. There's just no denying it anymore: Firefox and Thunderbird are the state-of-the-art browser and mail client, and there's no reason to use anything else now.

This is especially significant to those of us who remember when the upcoming release of Netscape 2.0 was a huge deal, because there was no longer any reason to stick with Mosaic, and Lynx was suddenly irrelevant. We also remember when Netscape announced that Communicator Gold (4.0) would not be free, while Internet Explorer 4.0 was gratis. That ended up being the end of the browser wars. The next version of IE was integrated into the new version of Windows (Win98), and though Microsoft paid billions for that little marketing ploy, IE ended up with more than 90% of the browser market. But today, from the ashes of Netscape, comes Firefox, and it's so good it makes IE not only irrelevant, but backwards and downright dangerous. That's a little something called karma, and Bill Gates should probably watch his ass, because more cosmic retribution is coming his way.

In more me-centric news, I had the battery terminal connectors replaced on the Explorer, and disconnected the useless alarm system. Next week I'll try to take the alarm out of the car entirely. At any rate, it's nice to have a quick-firing truck around, even if it's still running a bit too hot for me to be entirely comfortable.

By the way, here are some Google blogs I found this week that I thought you'd be interested in:

Sails That Carry Me Home
While I Was Smoking...
Mental Hopskotch
Hugh-Morris