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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.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.
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<sig>Guvf vf abg n frperg zrffntr
At least AOL didn't opt to name it Netscape2000
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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.
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