Dear Netscape,

You are the symbol of the fight for freedom from the ongoing domination of Microsoft in today economy. You are the idol for the fight of the small software developer against the bohemoth those of us in the trade affectionaly call “The Evil Empire” You won our respect. You won our admiration. You did what no company had ever done before. You catalyzed the phenomena of the Internet which none of us who were touched by it or experienced by it will ever forget. You are a hero. And for that we salute you.

Another great virtue of heroes is that they accept defeat graciously. In that respect however my dear Netscape you leave a lot to be desired. You lost the browser wars. But you mistakenly thing that the battle is still raging. Let me repeat that for you: You lost the browser wars. So now why after doing so much good for the world, humanity and the Net as we know, why in the name of peace and honor do you continue to plague us with your sub-par efforts to still call yourself a browser!?

Your style sheet support sucks. You can’t render a table without pegging a gigahertz processor. Your support for standards is flailing. Your innovation is dying. You make life miserable for all of those web developers out there who are forced to still support you as a legacy browser. Geez… people are now uttering your name with the same level of adoration as they mention CICS or mainframe!

It’s unfortunate but true… Microsoft whooped your ass and took away the glory. I mean what more do you need to realize that than to get acquired by AOL! Now the most graceful thing you can do, is to accept your defeat gracefully and bow out for good. We won’t think less of you if you do.

best regards,

A well-wisher.

N.B. : This rant is in no way intended to be directed at any of the really smart people who worked at Netscape prior to its acquisition by AOL or to the several open source developers who are writing great stuff everyday. This rant is directed at the Netscape browser. Simply because it just doesn’t cut it any more. And I firmly believe that the folks who are contributing to the Mozilla project are just as capable if not more so of creating software that can kick Microsoft’s ass, but the unfortunate truth folks, is that we’re not there yet… and the first step to improvement, is recognizing what needs to be improved.