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Technology Stocks : MSFT Internet Explorer vs. NSCP Navigator -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (19061)	5/14/1998 2:59:00 PM
From: Bearded One	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 24154

This comes from a discussion on the Netscape board, but I think it's more appropriate here. I want to shift gears for a moment and look at another aspect of IE vs. Netscape. I have the following thesis: The more Microsoft integrates IE into the OS, the better for Netscape. Reason: Software design is an intensely difficult problem. Most of the advances in software engineering in the past years have been in the form of 'modular design' techniques, leading to 'object-oriented design'. Integration is the opposite of object-oriented design. Two items are integrated if when one changes, the other is affected. Tracking and compensating for changes is a primary problem in software development and debugging. How can I let the user type in a long filename when my system relies on 8-character filenames with 3-character extensions? How can we add all these features to Office 97 and still let Office 95 users read the documents? Why does the system crash if I use Times-Roman 11 pt. font? Why did I lose my last week's email messages when I tried to backup my system? Basically, the more Microsoft integrates into the OS, the less innovation it can come up with later. How can they add a new cool function to IE without checking how it's going to effect every piece of code that IE is 'integrated' with? This is already a serious problem for them-- Notice how 3 years after Windows 95, the best they can come up with for a new OS is essentially a bug fix with some new device drivers and a browser. Meanwhile, Netscape can come out with a new browser every 6 months-- precisely because it is not integrated. My question is, assuming that Microsoft is giving up flexibility for integration, can Netscape keep their lead with new browsers that have 'killer' functionality? Or will Microsoft win by sheer marketing?