Netscape Communicator 4.72 Released

Quite a number of people have ants in their pants over the latest release of Netscape Communicator. This latest release, 4.72 to be exact, can also be grabbed through their Web site. Here's to hoping it's more stable than my current release. 'Course, Mozilla's getting really really close now...

Comments

doh!

[Caspuh]

I was going to post a more insiteful comment, but then Netscape crashed.

Release notes

[AT]

The release notes are here.

Quick summary:

• Global IME support: users of Windows 95, 98 and NT 4.0 can now download Global IME modules that enable input of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters into mail messages and web forms. For more information on using Global IME under communicator, choose International Users from the Help menu. Windows 2000 users should use the fonts and IMEs available on the installation CD. If you're running Windows 98, just select the Windows Update icon in the Start menu. From there, select Product Updates, and download the language support and IMEs you wish to use.
  
• User agent support for Windows 2000
  

Disabling shopping button..

[Joseph OConnor]

Put this line in your preferences.js file:

user_pref("browser.chrome.disableMyShopping", true);

Re:Disabling shopping button..

[ixx]

better yet use a hex editor or something such thing (i like bvi since it uses vi commands) and change the the "Shop" string to "/." and the url to slashdot.org. The string "Shop" can be found by searching for "toolBar*Myshopping.labelString:" and the url netscape shopping url can be found my searching for "tshop.html" Be sure you just replace and do not enter more characters than are already there or you will the binary will be useless. Make a backup and work on a second copy.

I make a xdelta patch so I can apply it on all the linux computers I use. The patch is specific to the build version though (do about: and you will see the version on the title bar). The newest one I have is for v4.7 build [en] 19990915. I have downloaded 4.72, but have not made a patch for it yet. I ran it and played around for a bit, and after seeing that it still displays the same annoying bugs as 4.7 I put off making a patch for now.

Anyhow my navigation bar has the following:

(forward)
reload
casa
search (goes to goole. you can edit the url for this too)
[fm] (freshmeat.net)
print
security
/. (slashdot.org)
halt

Re:Question

[zilym]

I just don't use Netscape for downloading files now. What I do is right click the download link, copy link to clipboard, open an xterm, and then use wget to download the file. That way, if netscape crashes (like it always does), the download is unharmed. Plus, wget is smarter than netscape. If the server isn't letting anyone in at the moment, wget keeps trying. If the connection gets dropped, wget keeps trying and will resume where it left off as soon as it can get reconnected.

Re:4.72? No thanks...

[Junta]

There are plenty of criticisms that are valid against netscape, and the shop button seems silly to me too, but your criticisms are a bit unjust. If your resolution makes things unreadable, why use it? it seems counterproductive.

Be gald that the buttons can be disbaled. Since no one has posted how in this thread, here it is, straight from my .Xdefaults:
Netscape*toolBar.myshopping.isEnabled: false

That's it.
To disable the search/my netscape, and add a Find button:
Netscape*toolBar.destinations.isEnabled: false
Netscape*toolBar.numUserCommands: 1
Netscape*toolBar.userCommand1.commandName: findInObject
Netscape*toolBar.userCommand1.labelString: Find
Netscape*toolBar.userCommand1.commandIcon: Find
Netscape*toolBar.search.isEnabled: false

Platform support

[The Man]

Netscape/AOL's choice of platforms to support makes no sense to me. Figure this: Linux 2.2 is the current version; most people have stopped using 2.0 by now. Libc5 hasn't been supported by its authors in almost three years. So why is it that the Linux 2.2/glibc version is a) still unsupported, and b) linked against not-even-current versions of those libraries, especially when they still support 2.0/libc5???

As if that weren't sufficiently annoying, there's not been a Linux/SPARC version since 4.51, but there are five Solaris versions. Of course, none of those are for current versions of Solaris either. All this, of course, would be excusable if they didn't have any systems to build on or they weren't going to support oddball platforms (I will admit that Linux/SPARC is marginal, though it has multiple supported distributions and a growing user base), but then why oh why are there two SINIX builds??? Most people don't even know WTF SINIX _is_, much less have it.

The point? It doesn't seem like Netscape understands what people are actually using today. If the objective is to be compatible with as much as possible, then not having up-to-date Linux builds for at least Intel, SPARC, and Alpha makes no sense. For that matter, they don't even claim to support Solaris 7 or 8. 2.5.1 is itself archaic. If the objective is instead to support only the most popular platforms, then I certainly don't see the need for five Solaris builds, two AIX builds, anything related to SINIX, or a Linux 2.0/libc5 build. The obvious platforms to support would be Solaris 7, Linux 2.2-intel/glibc, the latest AIX, the latest Digital Unix, and IRIX 6.5.

So what can we do to increase their awareness of this problem? Numerous polite letters have garnered either no response or a polite "get lost" form letter. Ideas?

Alternate paranoid theory: AOL wants all the Unix builds to be against old systems so that people will switch to windoze and buy more aol service. Pretty paranoid, but aol is pure evil after all.

PS: Kudos to the mozilla team for recognizing the value of compatibility and multi-platform support. The Linux/SPARC build works as well as any other.

--TM, still using 4.51 on Ultralinux, the preferred platform of all major deities

Use IE if you run Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using netscape since it was version 1.x but finally this week, i got too pissed off at navigator for crashing, etc, i downloaded internet explorer 5.01 for win98 and it is just sooooo much faster and better than ns 4.7. almost nobody can deny it is a better product. the rendering speed alone is worth the price of download. i don't think i am ever going back unless i am using linux or on a school computer.

if you have no other reason to use IE other than Microsoft hatred that's fine. But if you want to see what Mozilla will hopefully eventually being like, just download IE and see for yourself.