Lasse Penttinen
10 Jun 2002 13:41
The brand new open source web browser Mozilla 1.0 did get quite a bit of attention from the media. Generally the feedback has been very positive.
The release of Mozilla 1.0 was reported by most tech news sites including BetaNews, CNET News.com, evolt.org, eWEEK, ExtremeTech, Geek.com Geek News, IDG.net, internetnews.com, Internet Week, LinuxMAX, Linux Today, MacSlash, MozillaNews, NeoWin.net, Slashdot, The Register, vnunet.com, WinInfo and ZDNet News. More mainstream news sites are also taking notice. BBC News has an article and smh.com.au (the online edition of The Sydney Morning Herald) reported on Mozilla a few days ago.
Taking a slightly different approach, PC Magazine marks the release with an interview with Mitchell Baker while ITBusiness.ca talks with Mike Shaver. Meanwhile, kuro5hin has an opinion piece about the release.
Mozilla 1.0 scored 7 out of 10 in CNET's review, which describes Mozilla as "the best free alternative to Microsoft IE." Meanwhile, eWEEK's analysis notes that "Mozilla makes it possible for any developer or company to customize the browser to be whatever they need it to be." NewsForge also discusses Mozilla's customizability. In addition, there's a Slashdot piece on the Mozilla 1.0 reviews.
On a related note, CNET has a video that recaps the browser wars and asks if Netscape 7.0 will revive the battle. (Mozillazine.org)
Mozillazine also announces that the work for 1.1 version will begin very soon, so the developers will not be sitting on their hands even though they just finished the huge project to a stable version state.
Interesting regarding the so called browser war (Netscape vs. Microsoft) is that America Online is now preparing Mozilla-based software package for their clients. AOL has roughly 35 million customers, so that will definitely have an effect. (Digitoday.fi)
So Microsoft is getting some resistance on all the battle fields. Sony is kicking their butt on the console market, Nokia refuses to team up with them on the mobile market, Linux gets more and more attention as a workstation platform every day (especially government organisations are interested), OpenOffice 1.0 offers an alternative to MS Office and now a major player like AOL starts to push Mozilla to the web surfers…