Browser Update

The advent of the Internet has provided those of who work at MCCD with an interesting ride. From its beginning, the web browser world has been a rapidly changing beast.

When the world wide web (www) first started, web pages were just plain text with a few formatting options. People (mostly university research entities) browsed the web with a program that wasn't unlike the interface to our current SIS system. There were no graphics, pop-up ads, streaming media, or flash animations.

The first graphical web browser was Mosaic. It was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Mosaic was the precursor to MCCD's most well known web browser: Netscape.

Netscape made browsing the web and accessing e-mail easy even for those who were not computer savvy. Web browsing and email were housed in the same program and, as it became the district's application of choice, it was readily available on most campus desktop computers.

Moving forward, Microsoft, began to recognize the importance of the Internet and created their own browser Internet Explorer. Thus began the Internet browser war. Microsoft's web browser, Internet Explorer in its early stage could not compete with Netscape. Netscape had been around longer and more people were using it. As history tells it, the tide changed very quickly in Microsoft's favor. Since most people used Windows, Microsoft's strategy was to bundle Internet Explorer with Windows for free, and bump out the need for anything else.

To make a long story short, Microsoft won the browser war and completely shut out industry demand for innovations to Netscape 4.x, which is the version that is still on most of our MCCD computer systems. In spite of this brand new computers that are put on employee desks are still configured with Netscape 4.x. In reality we all have our choice of what browser we use the most, but since most of us “learned” the web using Netscape, it is the one we use.

Since the web browser war ended, however, most of the Internet world uses Microsoft Internet Explorer and most web pages have been optimized for that browser. Side-by-side comparison with Netscape 4.x reveals that web pages generally load faster, and they look and function better in Internet Explorer. In some cases, pages that look and work fine in Internet Explorer do not even work at all in Netscape.

Where does this leave us at MCCD? Most of us use Netscape for email, which is separate from web browsing. What many do not realize is that you can use just about any software for your email. In fact the District is now officially supporting Microsoft Outlook, which is what is generally used by the corporate world. Since most of us just want to do our work and leave technology for the techies, the notion of having a choice is overwhelming but the CTL does offer workshops in the use of Outlook.

Another reason that many still use Netscape 4.x is the availability of roaming profiles. Using this feature we could load a properly configured version of Netscape 4.x on ANY computer that had Internet access, and all of our bookmarks and email settings followed us around. For email this is a nice feature since each computer does not have to be reconfigured for Netscape mail and if a problem occurred the preferences were still available online.

It remains to be seen what will become of Netscape 4.x as a supported application on campus, but here are some compelling reasons to use other applications. (I've separated them out into web browsing and email scenarios)

Web browsing:

Using Netscape 4.x for web browsing is using technology that is almost 6 years old. It works, but it is the technological equivalent of driving a 1980's model car (which some of us may still be using too J ). Using a more modern browser like Netscape 7 or Internet Explorer 6 (the newest versions of both) means you can take advantage of web sites that are using the latest web technology, and you avoid potential browser errors and crashes when attempting to access web sites with an older browser.

Email:

Microsoft Outlook (For PC Users) and Entourage (MAC Users) have integrated calendaring and task scheduling features to help you organize your time. Both are free for use on campus AND at home. Talk to the MCC technology helpdesk to get your copy installed on your work computer, or about getting a disk you can use to install it at home. If you are concerned the learning curve with new software, Netscape 7 (the latest version of Netscape) looks about 90 percent similar to Netscape 4.x email. Again, contact the MCC technology helpdesk about using Netscape 7. If you would rather not worry about a separate email application you can use the MCC Netscape Express system, which is a Web-based email program that is automatically set up for you to use. All you need is your email username and password, and your email can be accessed anywhere from any web browser (including Netscape 4.x) on any computer, much like other web-based email like hotmail or yahoo. The URL is http://mail.mc.maricopa.edu:8080

Check out the browser classes being taught by the CTL. They are listed on the CTL Calendar.