Slashdot Mirror
Netscape 6
An anonymous reader noted an article that showed up on PC World discussing Netscape 6. The beta is gonna start up on Tuesday ... ya know what the strangest part is? Calling it 'Netscape 6'. We've been thinking of it as 'Mozilla' for so long, thinking of it as 'Netscape' seems so ... boring.
Mozilla has been more stable than 4.71 for me in most cases, although I've crashed both. It's less of a memory hog judging by my handy xosview window, as well.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
>But the file format is still version 8 - microsoft failed to break
>compatibility to force users to go buy another upgrade.
wow. That's twice in fifteen years! (word 4 & 5 could share files, too.)
hawk
Last time I looked there were still some serious issues when running on a SMP machine. Basically it would crash in minutes (was it something to do with animated pictures?). I'm disabling SMP for Mozilla!
Moe-Zir-ra
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
Engineers use j instead of i.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
I think the animation in the top right is called the "throbber", in reference to the pulsing, throbbing beveled N in the original Navigator.
-- Tom Rathborne
Does AOL own the copyrights to Mozilla? If so, it could be dangerous when UCITA becomes law. AOL has a philosophy of leveraging everything for promotion and advertising. You've already seen the "Shop" button in Netscape 4.7 where the "Stop" button used to be, taking you to AOL's shopping portal. Future Netscapes are likely to do other things, such as download/run AOL ads.
The problem for AOL is that they have an open-source version (perhaps minus a few gimmicks) which is identical for features to Netscape only without their advertising/promotional code, leeching their already slight market share.
Conveniently enough, UCITA will allow copyright holders to relicence their code, invalidating prior licences. There will likely be a faction in AOL pushing to do this to Mozilla for practical business reasons. Once the open-source media hype dies down, their hand will be strengthened. If they get their way, posting Mozilla source code or binaries will become a copyright violation.
How are the other free browsers going?
Probably somewhere else on this thread already, but... There are a lot of reasons why Mozilla has custom widgets. The three most notable are: 1. Lack of a good cross-platform toolkit. Qt, maybe, but Mozilla needs to be real C++, not hackneyed C++. GTK? Windows port is still immature. Mozilla developers want 1 kit to worry about, not many. 2. Cross-platform standards. Motif is not GTK is not Qt is not Win32 is not (widget set). They all look different, and Mozilla's big thing (one of them) is that it looks the same everywhere. 3. No toolkit has all the widgets/features that the standards Mozilla implements wants, so they'd need to either add them, or write their own. As for skinning - the whole thing is XUL anyway, a combination of JavaScript and XML. Building around those two standards really makes them skinnable no matter what. (there are alternate chromes out there already, that are faster than the default one, and look nice - I use the OpenSource UI one). Simple bare-bones browser - compile it yourself, it's called `simplebrowser'. It comes with the nightly builds, but it doesn't work for me with them, you'll want the source. IIRC, it has back, forward, URL entry, and a gecko window. about as simple as you can get.
Windows 2000: Designed for the Internet. The Internet: Designed for UNIX.
---
Yeah! Features like conformity with W3C standards. Who needs em?!?
---
Conforming to W3C standards is all well and good, but it'd be nice to have a halfway native UI. This is the main thing that is bugging me with Mozilla...
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
You miss the point. IE actually is a good browser in comparison to Netscape - potentially even better.
The point is, I want the be the one to choose which browser I use. I want to be able to choose not to have a browser at all. It's not an 'integral part of the operating system', and I should be able to dump it.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Then turn it off.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Nope, existing copyright law does just fine. Except for BSD or X licenses (where the point is actually that companies like MS _can_ use the code if they want), incorporation into a closed-source product would be in violation of the terms of the license.
As for proving that they've taken code, that's no easier to prove than for closed-source software, where your competitor may have managed to appropriate your source code through industrial espionage, or just snagging what had been a legal copy of the code floating around. You'd be suprised at how freely even the source code to Windows NT flows, especially at some educational institutions.
DNA just wants to be free...
That should at least allow you to access/stat files/subdirectories. Of course, if you don't have at least search on the subdirs and read on the file, you're still screwed.
... or is that netscape6 the one inside blind? ... in that case, I guess we're both right.
DNA just wants to be free...
For better or worse, Mozilla (at least in all the current builds) includes Mail, News and Composer. I don't really know where they got rid of 10Mb of program, but it wasn't by leaving those out.
Sam TH
Sam TH
AbiWord Developer
True, but lots of linux distro's do this too. Slackware being the most recent example, but they certinly aren't the only ones.
I'm less sure about all the UI rewriting they did. It probably would have been better to use some cross-platform, Windows-like toolkit like wxWindows for the UI, at least for the first post 4.x release.
I"d much rather see software versioned by release year, or something like that...
Netscape 2000.1, netscape 2000.2 etc...
it'd make figuring out what version of what is really the newst and all that.
I'm not anal about version numbers either, but there are two things which make this case worth mentioning:
It's a simple fact that Mozilla itself referred to the upcoming version as 5.0. They only tried to change history just recently after getting ridiculed for skipping the version number. To accept their take on events in this situation, and to further go around and promote that version of history is either complete gullibility or pure intellectual dishonesty.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
there's also an, um, interesting little message that appears if you go to the URL "about:mozilla". It's been there in every version of netscape i've ever seen.
:)
if you don't happen to have a copy of netscape sitting around, i did a quick search and found a mirror here.
Fittingly enough, this little message is not in standard html. there's no <html></html>.. so although the Prophesy doesn't appear in Mozilla, and i doubt the AOL-owned netscape that's producing version 6 will care that much about tradition, if they DO add the about:mozilla egg, i hope they'll add the html tag as a kind of metaphorical sign that yes, for the first time, netscape _is_ actually thinking of "w3c-compilant" as a feature and not a bug.
Or even better, do it in XML.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Right, right, you're right. I forgot about IE on Mac.
A funny thing: I've heard that the Mac version is actually a lot more standards-compliant than the Windows one. It kind of makes you wonder if Microsoft took into account the significant proportion of web developers that use Macs.
It also suggests that the IE codebases for the two systems are different. In the way of non-Windows versions, what I always think of is the horrible Solaris port. Which was more of a *port*, in the usual sense-- they practically re-implemented all of Win32 just to get the thing to run. And, sure enough, it ended up running like a total pig.
That, in combination with the whole NT/Alpha 32-bit-system-on-a-64-bit-chip mess, have pretty much convinced me that Microsoft can't write cross-platform software to save its life. (IE and Office have to be near-complete rewrites. Hey, they can afford it!)
iSKUNK!
going from Pro/ENGINEER version 20.1 to Pro/ENGINEER 2000i to Pro/ENGINEER 2000i^2 (that's right, i-squared)
Uhrm, wouldn't that be Pro/ENGINEER -2000, then?
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Marketing-ese Reality
NT 3.1
NT 3.5
NT 3.51
NT 4.0
NT 5.0/2000
Microsoft always seems to take about three product versions to get it right. Third times a charm, so no wonder Windows 2000/NT3 is finally palatable.
cpeterso
Unfortunately I can't remember which movie it was, although I've a vague feeling that it was a well-known movie in the action- or spy-type genre. Can anyone help me?
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
1) Mozilla is the Opensource Software group. Netscape uses Mozilla's software (under the exact same lic as the rest of us) to produce Netscape. Netscape!=Mozilla.
2) Mozilla runs well on Linux.
3) It's a beta people. Buggy.... remember that.
Where did NT start at?
Version 3.1, because it had the same UI as Windows 3.1.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Rendering performance is identical, if not faster than IE5. Obviously startup time is slower (with mozilla) because IE5 preloads a lot of itself when Windows Starts.
The resize problem that existed in earlier netscape browsers is GONE. Mozilla/netscape6 incrementally resizes the page as it loads, and once loaded, if a user resizes the screen, it DOESNT cause a reload.. the resize is done WITHOUT clearing the screen, so it is like IE5 in that aspect, but i would personally say that Mozilla seems a little faster.
Also the other netscape problem that means the browser "locks up" when a table is being drawn has also is gone. one of the reasons being is because Mozilla/netscape6 draws tables FAR quicker than any browser yet, and it incrementally displays tables, resizing the content as it draws it.
Finally the network code has been revamped, therefore it appears to be quicker than NS and IE in that aspect too.
I would much rather use a browser that had support for html past version 3.2.
Is there any work on XML support for Lynx that I don't know about? I know I would offer an alterate set of stylesheets for text-only browsers on my pages as long as it doesn't make the source incompatible.
the quick and dirty:
Netscape 6 is based Mozilla. Mozilla is a lot more than gecko (the rendering engine). Mozilla is also a new and improved networking library, an FE built out of a new XP UI language called XUL and javascript, a cross platform COM called XPCOM, and much more. Netscape is going to be using all of these technologies developed by mozilla.org. Netscape is going to be adding some of their own proprietary technology to the 6.0 release. They are adding AIM (but Aim's FE will be built out of mozilla's XUL though), they're adding Sun's JRE, security, they're adding Net2Phone, and Flash and some other stuff but basically if you just look at the base install (which you will be able to download seperately) then you have a mozilla M15 build with some stability tweaks.
Asa
(Sorry, I feel compelled to reply)
The set of natural numbers has always been countable, silly. I'm just waiting for the next AIM beta build (3.5.aleph_0, of course).
Flame me if you must.
For more information, click here.
I'm thinking that they named it Netscape 6 to avoid losing the numerical edge to Microsoft, which already has version 5 of their browser out. Remember that Microsoft did a similar thing themselves when they went from Word 2.0 to Word 6.0 on the PC, to synchronize with their Mac product and of course WordPerfect.
I don't think there has ever been, nor will there be, an official "Netscape 5" product.
For more information, click here.
I'm tired of the Micros~1 trolls stating that IE has already won the browser war when it doesn't run on linux.
Hey, I like IE 5.5. I hate windows, but if IE 5.5 were available for linux, (and didn't take up as much memory and run as slowly as IE on solaris....), I'd probably use it. A number of other slashdotters who hate having netscape coredumps take their mail/browser down would probably also use it.
So... Micros~1, please either just go ahead and release your port of IE for linux, or stop trying to tout your browser as being better than Netscape/mozilla.
You'll never get me to switch back to a Micros~1 OS, but you might get me to use a Micros~1 browser or mail client on linux if it was the best product available.
I'm sure that IE on linux would also advance the mozilla project and the net result would be better browsers for all.
c'mon -- I'd be willing to bet that IE for linux has existed for a long time internal to MS (it's just another port from win32 src with mainwin, after all... how hard is that?). How come daily builds of Windows 2001 are for sale on street corners in Asia, but nobody's leaked MSOffice for linux or IE for linux?
It is now actually integrated into the browser. In the launch panel (where the Composer, Mail, Newsgroups, Navigator icons are) there is a new icon for the messenger. It pops up a window that uses the Gecko widgets, so I assume the whole component is integrated (I never use AIM, so didn't go any further).
Daniel.
The JDK included with this beta version (Sun's JRE for Java2, from the about page in Netscape) takes 7.8MB alone. On top of that they have bundled a separate application called Net2Phone that must take up at least a meg or two. In total the download was 13.xMB, so the actual browser/mail/news client (compressed) takes around 5-6MB.
Daniel.
Get it while you can :)
t scapeSetup.exe
ftp://lvftp.netscape.com/pub/blind/netscape6/Ne
(deliberately not hyperlinked)
I'm guessing the linux version is in that directory too, you'll just have to figure out the filename.
I was correct in my assumption - once I got the sidebar preferences program to work correctly and not crash I found that there was indeed 3 dummy entries in the sidebar, one of which was a link to the entire browser itself. This was an abuse of XML - this recursive activity has to be checked for otherwise we will soon start to see our first Netscape 6 Viruses (they will occur anyway) that simply use XML to define something that shows itself inside itself, or shows a Netscape inside itself. Having removed the 3 offending entries, everything works fine and is stable as a table with 50 equispaced legs (of equal length). No wonder Netscape was thrashing though - it must have been loading itself hundreds of times on startup. Nasty.
It has found my IE bookmarks, god bless the little thing. I am very impressed now, but Netscape had better fix the one thing that cacked it up for me, because other people might not be so tolerant.
That sidebar is damned handy, and usable. This might be it - bye bye IE5.
So whoever said it was 5.5Mb was lying - but this is a beta and it might include debug symbols and the like. Now at 6.6Mb
Oh, the URL can be found on Betanews, the one with lvftp.netscape.com in it. 7.1Mb now.
I will post a usability report soon.
Has anyone used that Slashdot headline thing yet? Is it worth having, so you can be on the train, with a two hour journey to the nearest computer you have access to, just to know that you have missed out on a great informative first post?
Run it.
Wow! how many GPFs did that generate! All to do with WinOldApp.DLL or summat as well. Powercycle machine (only way - it died truly - PII 400 w/ 128Meg)
Reboot. Run it. Thrash thrash thrash, window pops up as before, GUI etc, thrash thrash. Nothing works though, so this comment is not powered by Netscape 6 as I would have hoped. That NetPhone thing is annoying as well.
So this post is powered by Netscape 6. But it is refusing advertising for some reason, and popping up windows saying "Connection refused: blah"... at least it isn't IE5, which blanks the display and brings up that damned awful error page.
THe resize works perfectly, even with complex tables - no more reload, real time update of the window internals.
Renders Slashdot fine. Looks like Mozilla. GUI is a bit dull - can someone do an Aqua theme for it? Oh, this is build 2000032306 so it is 6 days out of date from the latest Mozilla build - what has been gained in those 6 days?
I like the new icon for Netscape as well - the border looks quite classy. No to play with the preferences and see what I can do.
5.5Mb is a much nicer download than the 16-20Mb downloads that were common with the old version. I wonder if this is just because of the cruft free code or if they have left out other components, such as the crap and useless Netscape Composer package?
Slashdot headlines to your mobile phone: HERE
"Shift-Insert" is, of course, the default insert command on all Windows programs, making switching back and forth a pain in the ass.
No program should lock entirely because of a single keystroke.
The cake is a pie
I really wish software companies would worry more about stability and less about cool new features.
The cake is a pie
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.
Subject: NETSCAPE 6 FAQ
...
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 19:10:10 -0600
From: Jay Garcia
Organization: http://www.GatewayNO.com
Newsgroups: netscape.communicator
Followup-To: dev.nul
There have been several press releases indicating that Netscape will be
releasing the first public beta of "Netscape 6".
Q: What will it be called
A: More than likely "Netscape 6 Beta1"
Q: When will it be released
A: Within the next 25 days according to the press releases
Q: C'mon, when WILL it be released
A: See the previous question
Q: Will there be special newsgroups for this release
A: Yes, there will. We will announce the names of the groups when
they are created
Q: Can we post questions concerning the new release in N.Communicator
A: Yes, you can but you will be redirected to one of the new groups
Q: When can we start posting questions about the new release
A: As soon as it is released at which time the new groups will have been
created
Q: Will this be a "full-featured" beta
A: No, it will not. Some features will be disabled
Q: Can anybody download and run the beta
A: Yes
Q: Where can I download it
A: There will be an announcement as to the availablity and the sites for
downloading
Q: Is this "Netscape 6" just another Communicator
A: No, it is a totally new application
Q: Can I see what it looks like now
A: Yes, it is based on the Mozilla Builds
http://www.mozilla.org
http://www.mozillazine.org
Q: Will Communicator still be available
A: Yes, there will be continuing maintenance releases for the time being
Q: How long will the new Netscape be in "beta"
A: That depends on how many users are actively running it and reporting
bugs
Q: How do I report bugs
A: An announcement will be made when the beta is released as to the
various feedback links and bug report form links, etc.
Q: Will it be a "kick-butt" application
A: You betcha
Q: How do you know this
A: Because we have been running the Mozilla builds for quite some time
and we can see the potential in this new offering
Q: Can I post a reply to this article with more questions
A: Please don't as there are several places on the web to get more info
and we need to keep THIS group uncluttered so that we can reply to
Communicator related issues. THANKS
Q: In your opinion what is the "neatest" feature in Netscape 6
A: Well, I can't divulge any 'features' in NS 6 but I can tell you that
the Mozilla Build has one. "Accept images that come from the originating
server only"
Q: Any other features that are "neat"
A: In Mozilla you can configure more than one POP account without having
to create more profiles
Q: Have there been any delays in shipping the NS 6 Beta
A: Not that I know of, still on schedule, stay tuned
Q: It's being reported that the release will be April 5th, is that true
A: Could be
Q: You mentioned that it will lack some features, which ones
A: Can't say, but this is only BETA1 and a lot of future features will
be disabled for now
Q: If these so-called "features" are FEATURES then why are they DISABLED!!!!
A: Simply because they are still in various stages of development
Q: When will these disabled features be AVAILABLE
A: As soon as the module owner (developer) has debugged all the code and
it works
Q: Can I get excited or do I have to chill out
A: BOTH !!
Jay Garcia
Netscape Champion
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The real reason (or at least one of the real reasons) that this is Netscape 6 and not 5 is that the beginnings of Netscape 5 actually existed.
No. The real reason why this is Netscape 6 and not Netscape 5 is to beat MS at the version number game.
Actually, you post could be closer to the truth than you think. The other day, MSFT finaly released IE 5 for Mac. At the heart of this release is the Tasman rendering engine. I am currently posting from MacIE 5 as it is a far better browser than Netscape 4.7 (I sure hope mozilla is as good). As far as I can tell tasman is a lot like gecko in rendering. According to MSFT's web page this is an entirely new rendering engine over 1.5 years in the making and released first for Mac. I don't know what to believe but this could be possible, test it out on the Mac and then release IE 6 with the full blown less buggy version.
I wouldn't doubt it if MS has copied gecko and are about to incorporate it into IE 5.5/6.
This is a big issue for OSS projects. If you get a good one going. MS (insert evil closed source company) can copy the fruits of your labor and incorporate it into their monopoly continuing software. And you can't stop them or prove that they did it (without some new laws).
no sig.
Has anyone noticed a weird thing ? they say that the compressed file will have 5.5 M (compared to 15M the current version). What does this mean ? Are they stripping a lot of functionalities out of it ? have they given up some more or less useless components (e.g the radio part) ? ... Will they support it ? (most likely, though, since they mention cross-platform compatibility).
Will it be linked to some libraries that come with the OS ? If so, which OS ? Windows perhaps ?
Linux is not mentioned at all
As far as I am concerned, I hope that smaller size means less bugs (although we have the perfect example of M$-DOS 1.0- some 300 bugs in 5000 lines of code - great job breeding them guys).
Anyways, I surely hope it will have less bugs than the current version.
It was not meant to be funny. It was true. But this is also the same lawyer that kept trying to argue in support that software engineers use the keyboard only 20% of the time.
Fight Spammers!
During one of my three days of deposition with them, they asked me what is Mozilla, since they saw that in some of the emails. My attorney explained it to them.
My attorney is a geek too.
Fight Spammers!
Actually, the big problem with NS is that they never bothered implementing half of the document object model as defined by the W3C.
This makes programming anything decently nice brutally difficult under Netscape, even though it could be a breeze under IE.
If you have ever written anything even vaguely demanding, you'd know this is true. And since you don't, I can just assume that you're another person who likes to bitch for the sake of hearing his own voice.
Cheers.
--
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Maybe it's some sort of newfangled reverse-branding strategy.
Ways to get your host's attention: uploading the prerelease I grabbed from Betanews last night to my website:
e tup.exe
ftp://ftp.atthat.com/pub/getslashdotted/NetscapeS
It's the Win32 version w/ installer.
The real reason (or at least one of the real reasons) that this is Netscape 6 and not 5 is that the beginnings of Netscape 5 actually existed. This is what was origianlly handed over to mozilla.org. Then it was decided (after a lot of work had been done) that it would be better to start from scratch. Therefore, Netscape 5 died before the public at large ever saw it, and the current mozilla product is version 6.
Sam TH
Sam TH
AbiWord Developer
And I don't understand why that is a bad thing. Everyone does it. Most people who are using computers today are dumb enough to equate higher version number with better software. MS knows this, heck they practually invented the concept of version inflation. Where did NT start at?
If it convinces the casual user that Netscape is better, more power too them. They will have beated MS at it's own game.
Finkployd
Redmond, Washington: In a surprise move, Microsoft today announced that it would make available a preview release of its new web browser and that it would feature the so-called "Gecko" technology.
"We kept hearing about this Gecko thing," said Ben Dover, Microsoft Spokesperson. "We had no choice but to include it ourselves, with some minor modifications."
When asked to elaborate, Dover explained, "Well, we felt that as good as Gecko was, it couldn't hurt to fix some 'bugs.' So we fooled around with it for a while. When we were done, we realized that nothing worked any more. But we had to have Gecko. Because we lacked in-house talent to do it correctly, we eventually just renamed MSHTML.DLL to GECKO.DLL. All better now!"
Dover went on to explain that the new browser would be a svelte 55 MB download. When reminded that the new Netscape browser was a mere 5.5 MB, Dover responded, "Hey, you get what you download. The Microsoft browser is obviously ten times better."
"I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. I'm all out of bubblegum." MSE USC APX AIA CSI CASp
Well I submitted this as a story the other day, but apparently no one cared about it:
For as much as Linux (sorry, Mac user here---I need Quark) users kvetch about the lack of Flash any time web browsers come up, I thought it would get posted. Oh well.
----
----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Somehow, someone leaked the location of the netscape-branded pre-beta builds of Mozilla/Netscape 6 on tuesday. Thanks to an alert friend, I got a copy before they pulled it, both of the Windows and Linux builds.
It looks pretty much the same as mozilla, except it has a really cool new Netscape animation in the upper right corner there (what is the standard nomenclature for that anyhow?). Also, the win32 builds have that annoying blotchy toolbar bug.
On a Pentium 300mhz with 64mb RAM, it seemed pretty responsive, more so than the mozilla nightly builds. The layout is a lot faster than Netscape 4.x.
Based on my experience with the Windows and Linux versions, I think this browser will be at least as fast as IE 5. I think, however, that if they had skipped the skinnable custom-widget idea, the browser would be faster and much more reliable. Personally, I'd like to see someone just yank the Gecko engine and put it in a simple, bare-bones browser.
-JD
Terminology: In Mozilla-speak, chrome is a package which changes the XUL that defines the interface for Mozilla. Chrome changes not just the look but also the feel and even the functionality of the browser. Within just one chrome package, however, users will also be able to use skins, which in Mozilla refer to packages which simply change the look of the widgets.
The chrome that Mozilla has been using since around milestone 12 is chrome that was designed by Netscape for Communicator 6. Hence Communicator 6 will look much like M14.
Mozilla developers have assured us that the grey strip under the buttons will go away. (There's even a bugzilla entry for it.)
In any case, it is likely that once the skinnability support in mozilla has settled down, the open-source mozilla browser will begin using a distinct skin, separate from the netscape skin. The following was posted to netscape.public.mozilla.ui by Matthew Thomas:
But skinnability is also going to be fixed by Ben during the chrome cleanup after beta 1 (go, Ben!), and Mozilla will be able to start using its own default skin distinct from the one used in Netscape. And that, in my humble opinion, can't come a moment too soon.
For now, you can download new chrome to use with M14 or with the latest nightlies at mozillazine's chromeZone.
Damn it Dave, Install me. You know you want to!
Fight Spammers!
Mozilla.org still has pages on its own site referring to the upcoming release (the one with the Gecko engine) as being version 5.0. Since they themselves weren't referring to the version they dumped as Netscape 5, your explanation is just an exercise in revisionist history. Everybody knows the real reason why it's version 6 -- to make it sound better than IE5 -- so please quit trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes on this.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Okay, question from a non-programmer, here, so be gentle :-)
How much of NS 6 is mozilla.org's work? The article makes it sound like "Gecko" is a single defined unit within NS6, and it is that part which mozilla.org contributed. Though from reading /. and mozilla.org, I have the impression that the mozilla project touched on just about every part of the browser.
========
<sig>Guvf vf abg n frperg zrffntr
At least AOL didn't opt to name it Netscape2000
---
Jedi-Bene Gesserit
"Teachers leave us kids alone
A couple of other things about the install I forgot to point out:
:(
(as I mentioned earlier) Sun's JRE for Java 2 is included. This takes up 7.8MB by itself, so the 5.5MB figure quoted in the article is for the browser itself.
The browser comes with the Shockwave/Flash plug-in.
The installation procedure (at this stage) does not let you choose which Netscape components you want to install (ie you can't leave out the integrated parts, like the instant messenger, the mailer, the newsreader and the composer).
The AIM buddy list is one of the sidebar tabs now, along with (dysfunctional) newsfeeds from cnn.coma and reuters, and stocks.
There is no theme selector in the preferences panel. I hear latest Mozilla snapshots do have a functional theme selector built-in.
The URL about:mozilla doesn't do anything
The back and forward buttons don't have a drop down history list (it's back to using the Go menu a la Netscape 3.0) I'm sure this will be implemented though, as it is in IE5.
PS: It's interesting that they've dropped the "Communicator" title too.
Here's the catch. Netscape 6 is a browser that is built on Mozilla. Mozilla is the Open Source browser we all have been following for a long time. Now, Netscape took Mozilla and made another product based on it. That's Netscape 6.
People should realise that *anyone* can take the Mozilla source code, hack it and release an own version. So Mozilla continues to live well.
Someone pointed out that the beta will have AIM and some other AOL's braindead ideas. Remember that you don't have to use Netscape 6. Just download Mozilla and use it.
But I don't think Mozilla/Netscape 6 is ready yet for a beta version. It certainly is already useable and I do use it most of the time but still I'd like it to be a bit better before hitting the beta stage. And it should have automatic URL completion which I'm missing badly.
If this browser is not at least as fast as IE5 (or faster), they shouldn't bother.
n s browser.
;-)
I beg your pardon! IE is Windows-only, which makes it useless for non-Windows users, and embedded systems.
As for speed, remember that Mozilla still has a lot of debugging code left to trim out. I can't say whether IE may be faster than the final release; that may very well be the case. But I'd rather take a well-designed, 100% standards-compliant, and still-blazingly-fast Mozilla, over a single-platform, non-source-available, mostly-standards-compliant-but-with-some-exceptio
(Technically, the difference is similar to the correctness-before-speed Apache vs. the speed-at-all-costs IIS. But here, there's no ease-of-use issue to consider
What's especially nice about Mozilla is that it will likely become another Linux. Where you have this open code base, that anyone can get their hands into and improve. So if anyone out there is unhappy with Mozilla's performance, and they have the necessary technical skill, they can do something about it. Given the large number of people to which a browser is a useful application, there are many such potential contributors around-- both individuals and commercial interests. AOL is only one of many.
Just like everyone and their dog is working right now to make Linux into the be-all end-all of operating systems (high-end SMP, XFS, S/390 ad infinitum), so will it probably happen with Mozilla. So, while the first non-beta release may come up short of IE (although it won't be by much), future releases are going to eclipse it completely.
IE is pretty much confined to where it is right now. Mozilla is going to be everywhere else.
iSKUNK!
Netscape 5, aka Netscape Classic, was the first version that Netscape released as open source. The mozilla team worked on it for a while, then gave up as the code was rather hideous to work with. Netscape 6 is where they started over from the ground up.
Nathan
Soon Word 3 and Netscape 5 and IPv5 will all be reclaimed, as part of a national cardinal-recycling program.
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 :)
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
They added .3 to 4.7 and got 6.0.
Fight Spammers!