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BetaNews had posted a link last night to a Netscape site where N6 Preview 1 could be downloaded, but Netscape caught wind of it and pulled the files. Oddly, BetaNews also deleted the discussion of N6 (not exactly what I look for in a discussion site). Based on reviews by some people who managed to grab it before it was pulled, the download is 16 megs and is akin to a Netscape-branded nightly Mozilla build with a spell checker and Netscape-branded AIM built in.

It installed relatively painlessly with InstallShield (no restart required).

The cool stuff is it includes a Java 2 virtual machine licensed from Sun. I've tried a few java enabled pages today, and everything's worked fine on this relatively slow computer, at a comparable rate to MS's virtual machine.

SSL is enabled, so on-line shopping works well. The widgets don't feel nearly as "glitchy", especially the side toolbar. Dialogs are cleaner and closer to Netscape 4.7's. Page updates are as fast as recent Mozilla snapshots, if not more so, and easily comparable to IE5 on the same machine. Rendering speed is (subjectively) up there with Opera. And the new Netscape throbber really kicks ass. The memory footprint seems to be much smaller too, because I'm able to open a few windows without the usual disk grinding I had before.

The bad stuff - they still haven't fixed the button placement in the top toolbar. Grrrr...this is really ugly (but functionally irrelevant I should point out). No URL auto-completion. AOL have bundled some crappy Net2Phone application, and built in AIM to the browser. If these had been left out, I'm sure the 13MB download size would be significantly reduced (ie the bloat is not appreciated). And while I don't mind the general look of the Gecko widgets, I think the flat grey menus need at least a little sprucing up.

BTW, I'm not complaining. I actually used Communicator 4.x betas, so I realise that a lot of the final functionality will be fixed for the final release. It's disappointing the number of people who complain that Mozilla is unstable and not feature-complete. Well duh, it's a pre-release isn't it? The other frequent comment that bugs me is "Why Netscape 6 and not 5?" Well to the average consumer (and bear in mind Netscape is being produced by AOL for consumption by their user base, as the inclusion of the AIM messenger attests) version numbers are as good a way as any to compare software packages. Psychologically, a Netscape 5 release would imply a lagging of technology, considering IE5.5 is just around the corner. It's pretty obvious to me that this is a case of keeping up with the Jones's.

I should also warn to be wary of downloading this from the link at betanews because it appeared to link to a 4.7 release of Communicator. Use the direct link at arstechnica instead (if it's still up).

Cheers,

(posted with Netscape 6.0 Preview Release 1 :)

Microsoft isn't one to lie about something once it's out in the open. BetaNews talked to some Microsoft spokespeople and say nothing of the sort is in development. Sorry for all of you who had your hopes up. http://betanews.com/article.php3? sid=951431032

Maybe this whole thread about Navigator crashing won't matter much if Netscape really releases 5.0 trial version at the end of this month and the final by February?

BetaNews.Com Article: Netscape 5.0 Too Little Too Late?

Some may remember the 'Windows Refund Ordeal' where by people were attempting to return their copy of win9x to the manufacture in order to get a refund. Its possible that this is in response to these attemps.

Here is betanews.com's synopsis of the events.
http://betanews.com/article.p hp3?sid=story36a9330ea874f


I think this is great, I don't see how anyone can disagree with that... except MS I suppose.

-Ecc