If You Can Read This,
You Ain't Using Netscape

(or you have found out how to turn off colours.)

This page is fueled from the rage this page invoked in me. Wen using NetScape Naviagator 1.1N (the latest c00lezt Browza &c.pp.), I got a (mostly) empty page. Guessing background-color related trouble (bgcolor="#FFFFFF", link="#CC6699" ), I started up a good old-fashioned Mosaic -- which didn't show anything either (it didn't grok the tables). The only thing I got was a "you ain't using Netscape, suffer from the consequences!" warning message. (Argh!) Third attempt: Arena. Finally i can read the text (and the warning, of course). (I guess emacs-w3 would also have worked.) Of course, Arena died when following the first link. Sigh.

Therefore, this anti-netscape rant. How can a browser be so unbelievably dumb to display the text of a page in the same colour as the background?! Now if I were using a strange monitor that purports to have colour but actually just shows gray, I might understand this; but this here black-and-white thingy is about as basic as they come! (I can understand people that use NetScapisms; it is probably all they know; I can even understand why they use so much color -- I sometimes think that there's a US-wide embargo on grayscale and b/w monitors; the term "visual subtlety" is inherently UnAmerican; but the guys who write a browser should know better.)

Methinks we need a special word for A Feature That Renders A Product Unusable. "Disabling Technology" could fit the bill. Probably too intellectual, though: "Netscape Is Disabling Technology" is not a very good slogan to rally the disempowered masses behind.


(21.09.95) I am not the only one with this problem; witness Rat's Page, which is http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/ratinox/crippled.html. Includes a do-it-yourself explanation.
This page is part of the Rant Space.