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Netscape 6 Preview Release
deadpixel writes, "The Netscape 6 preview has been released. Really small download. No more Mozilla, sniff.
" Kinda sad, but I think I'll use the Mozilla icon for this just
as a tribute ;)
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Going through the website at the link provided won't let you download the beta unless you accept a tracking cookie from ads.web.aol.com. It looks like you can do an FTP download without cookie tracking from:
ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/nets cape6/english/6_PR1.
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Open mind, insert foot.
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I'd actually go as far as to say that the release of a commercial Netscape 6 will be the point when Mozilla.ORG really starts coming into its own. Just imagine: a commercial browser with millions of users, but still (almost) all the code out there for anyone to grab and hack on.
Methinks the future looks very bright. Now we just need a working OpenJava plugin for Linux...
I don't know if they'll work with the netscape beta, but if you are using a nightly build of mozilla, you can get skins from Chromezone. Since beta is nearly identical to the nightlies, these should work, but no guarantees from me. BTW, I strongly recommend Aphrodite and Sullivan- don't waste your time on the others (yet- classic could be really nice, eventually.)
~luge
IAAL,BIANLY
Just an FYI, in the latest nightlies there are no keyboard commands in the pulldowns. We'll see what that means, I suppose. ;)
Also, in Mozilla, everything is skinnable- not just skinnable in the "I can make it look pretty" sense, but also in the "I can change it completely" sense. That includes keyboard shortcuts, menu layouts, menu content, etc., etc., not just getting rid of that horrific blue-green
~luge
IAAL,BIANLY
Netscape is the first in what we at mozilla.org expect will be a long list of vendors and organizations releasing Mozilla-based products, and while that's a pretty exciting milestone, it's not our final goal. Lots more work to do.
If you're having trouble with specific parts of the Netscape beta, you might want to try the upcoming Mozilla M15 to see if the bugs in question have been fixed. There are a few familiar reports in the comments here, and some of them are already fixed in the tree. (Nightlies are always a hit-and-miss thing, and have been largely miss in the last week or so, but the brave and self-directed might want to take a peek in the interim.)
(Posted with 2000032909)
Absolutely agreed. Checking out the Mozilla home page, you see that while the number of "outside" developers has increased only slowly, the number of checkins from outside has skyrocketed. This exactly mirrors my own intentions - I've always promised myself that I'd actually start hacking the code and contributing better features (in the sense that *I* will like them more:) only after the commercial version of Netscape is forked off.
The reasons for this are simple.
1) Don't even think about trying to get a new feature, as opposed to a bug fix into the source tree while the Netscape team is on the straight stretch towards a commercial release.
2) Now that Netscape is separate, Mozilla is a LOT more "ours".
I think I'm hardly the only developer that feels this way. I'd look for the number of outside developers to double in the next month.
BTW, for anyone that's interested, if you want to hack on Mozilla you need a gig of free disk space, and good fast processor - I'd suggest at least 400 MHz, and any current version of Linux. Downloading the source takes about 30 mins on a 56K modem and the initial build takes about 40 mins. In contrast to other reports I've seen, I've never had a *single* nightly tree fail to build on Linux. It's actually pretty darn easy to get into, compared to some source installs I've done.
(Posted with Netscape 6 pre-release of course:)
--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
RANT MODE ON
What is with these installers these days? You download a tiny instalation EXE which then in turn tries to download the actual software package. The hell with you if you are actually behind a firewall or proxy that the "smart" installer doesn't know about!
What happened to the days when you just download the setup EXE, run it, and the software was installed???
RANT MODE OFF
Anyway, if anyone knows how to install the Windoze version of this on a machine behind a proxy let me know!
________________________________
hi people. im just testing the postability of this shiny new browsetr. This troll seemed like a good thing to respond to. Is there anything better than hot mozilla down the front of your gritscape?
Lessee... two problems. ALT-[left|right] arrow have been replaced with CTRL-[ and CTRL-]. Years of reflexive training down the tubes. Also, manage bookmarks is next to useless. I can't drop bookmarks into a folder, open or closed. They fall either above or below the folder.
But, man, it sure is fast.
Eric, making his 'first post' from N6
Therefore, if you want to be compatible with IE/Netscape 4+, you have to sniff for document.all, document.layers and document.getElementById, and write *three* different scripts.
;).
Yup, just did some tests on some DHTML widgets I wrote and this is true. Current DHTML will not work with NS6. Three checks have to be made to see which browser you're running on. *ugh* I can only imagine the amount of headaches this is going to cause people. It's bad enough for my personal site, but now I'll have to spend time making clients sites at work functin correctly. *ugh ugh*
Yuck, will you look at that source?! This is hardly the elegant separation of content, style and behaviour HTML-CSS-DOM promised us.
The source is horrible. I wondered if they even thought about making it more modular, or just slapped it together. As such, for what's being done on that page, it shouldn't take that much code. My bet is it's just sloppy programming (or at least that's my hope!
ftp://ftpX.netscape.com/pub/netscape6/english/6_PR 1
Replace the X with any number from 1 to 8, and there you go.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
The small download only includes the setup.exe file. The rest of the files are downloaded from netscape's FTP site.
From the looks of mozilla, the total amount to download should be around 6mb.
PS While they're at it, can we do something about that annoying SmartDownload program that shows banners?
Netscape's user-agent string has been "Mozilla" since at least version 1 -- long before there was Mozilla Project. For that matter, Explorer shows up in access logs as Mozilla/MSIE.
This does not mean MICROS~1 is using Mozilla Project code in Explorer.
Well, I'm posting from Mozilla. (Sue me, I like the name Mozilla.)
Some quick notes: I started using the web back when beta versions of Mosaic were the height of sophistication. I used Netscape up until the 4.x days on Unix, NT, and Mac, when I switched to MSIE on both NT and Mac. Why? It was better, a lot better in some cases.
Mozilla Win32 impressions so far: not so great.
The activation script is hideous- lots of graphical glitches that remind me of student written X programs.
The browser overall isn't faster than MSIE5. Opening menus is slowwww- just scrolling back and forth across the menubar will cause the menus to lag. Opening/closing windows is also slow, at least compared to MSIE. Hopefully this is just debug code and the real Mozilla will be faster.
So far no crashes. Doesn't say much, but some of the stuff I've thrown at Mozilla would have already killed Netscape4.
Why, oh why doesn't Mozilla mark where I was in a previous document when I hit the back key? Why doesn't it copy MSIE's autocomplete function? Both are serious reasons I might not use this over MSIE.
Many of my old Java applets don't display correctly. This might just be my bad programming, but given my horrible memories of trying to get applets to function under Netscape/Mac I'm a bit worried.
The Chime plug-in doesn't work- it doesn't display anything. This alone will keep me from using it until it's fixed. (To be fair, Chime is a tricky plug-in- MSIE has had problems with it for years.) Have to send a bug report.
Thanks guys, for letting me kill AOL IM. I stopped using Netscape on the Mac the day a new version installed IM even when I told it not to.
Will I use it? Maybe, at least to check out sites I write. But it's not enough to make me switch for good on NT/Mac, especially since MSIE5 is out for the Mac as well.
Eric
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Yes, I understand that debugging code will have a performance impact (generally in my code I get about a 10% to 20% slowdown due to additional checking and logging). However, to have this level of impact their code would have to look like:
void somefunc(int x)
{
assert(1==1);
assert(x==x);
++x;
assert(x==x);
}
Especially for a preview release (i.e. a release that "normal people" might look at), they need to have operations as close as possible to final product. People will judge Netscape 6 by this: a hyper-sub-light interface like this will turn more people to Internet Exploiter than any amount of Microsoft marketing.
When I tried M[{11}-{14}], I understood that it was going to be slower than release, and I accepted this. But this is rediculous!
Also, you add a signature but you post as an AC. Why don't you create an account? (I don't mean this as a flame, but as a real question). It's not like it costs anything, and then your comments would be more likely to be moderated up.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Whats the deal here? Not every Linux user is a dedicated hacker. I do dive into code every once and a while but I sure like having step-by-step instructions or an install program.
So how come Netscape (and the mozilla project) both ship a tar.gz which unpacks a directory called "package"?? what a wierd name for a program directory. So now what? Ok so one has to unpack it in an already made directory say /usr/mozilla then read the README on how to run. like you can't run the thing with the current directory anywhere except the directory where you unpacked it. So the real deal here is there should be a README availiable on-line or in Netscape's FAQ on what steps and causions someone should be aware of before downloading and installing.
This really comes down to, Companies should adhear to either of the two de-facto standards:
- GNU configure (autoconf/automake) Most unix users understand how to use this install utility and find that packages built with this a far eaisier to understand and build.
- One executable install shield Wana ship binaries? well toss them in a self extracting executable (shar?) and have the install program ask proper questions like where to install and what compenants to install. This method is very poular on window based machines. Why not use it for other platforms?
So wheres the hold up? why is it always so different for any other operating system except the ones Billy boy authorizes?> SELECT * FROM brain_cells WHERE synaptic_rate > 0
0 row returned
- The back button no longer functions as a history dropdown. This is a very convenient feature, and downright necessary when the previous page has a redirect to the current page.
- A home button. I'm definitely not the first to comment about this.
- The url window no longer has a history dropdown. This was also very handy.
Aside from that, I can only pray that the speed improves in the final release. If not the question will shift from "Will Netscape make up the lost ground?" to "Will Netscape survive?"Oh the humanity. mozilla.org is down, the nightly builds have stopped, the source tree has been closed, and M15 is right out.
I am, of course, being sarcastic. mozilla shows no signs of going away just because a commercial distro happens to be on the release schedule.
Unless someone knows otherwise.
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
does anyone else find this interesting?
/bin/ls. ..
...
ftp> cd netscape6
250 CWD command successful.
ftp> ls
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 5 888 999 60 Mar 27 19:11 .
drwxr-xr-x 23 888 999 4096 Mar 23 16:17
drwxr-xr-x 3 888 999 23 Mar 23 16:17 english
drwxr-xr-x 3 888 999 23 Mar 23 16:18 japanese
drwxr-xr-x 2 888 999 4096 Apr 5 03:55 marketing
marketing is now apparently a language...
Lea
Okay, I've held off on commenting on Mozilla and/or Netscape 6 until I had a version that would actually run.
The themeable/skinnable GUI is just a bad, bad, BAD idea. I haven't tried it on my Mac yet, but the Win32 beta is horribly slow and unresponsive (one time I got a "this cookie wants to be set" dialog after I had closed the browser window!), and the UI sticks out like a sore thumb -- it feels like I'm running a big honking Java applet instead of the "leanest, most stable browser on the market".
Yes, I know this is a beta, but I have yet to see any program improve 200% over a preview version, which is what this needs.
The HTML rendering is great, however. Although it's weird to see the background GIFs rendering incrementally then tiled, and watching tables render incrementally is odd as well, it does feel faster than Netscape 4.x.
Jay (=
I don't mean this to be a flame, but it is going to come out as one.
A long time ago (when 4.5 came out) I griped right here on Slashdot because of the way it was handling the resizing of images in tables. When you told an image to be 100% of a cell wide, it worked fine. But when you told it to be 100% of a cell tall, it would not. So, I bitched.
Some lady from Netscape saw my post on here and sent me an email about "Well, we are not going to fix bugs in 4.x, but you are welcome to help us fix things in Mozilla by submitting bug reports!" Well, I did.
So, now I download 6.0 and what do I find? The same fricking bug is there.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Check out the bug.
I would submit this as a bug, but their server is not letting bug reports in.
More bloatware. Of course AOL owns them now so it's AOLware.
What is it with throwing everything into a web browser nowadays?
All I want is a web browser with java capabilities, security for on-line ordering, and ability for plug-ins (shockwave, etc) for multimedia.
I DON'T want integrated email.
I DON'T want integrated HTML editor.
I DON'T want automatic upgrades.
I DON'T want channels, subscriptions, etc.
I DON'T want messaging, chat, etc.
I DON'T want fancy schmancy crap.
Just a SMALL, STABLE WEB BROWSER to view WEB PAGES. NOT some totally integrated internet appliance software or whatever. Think I better learn to program now. What's the best language to do this in? C++? C? FORTRAN? hehehe
I can't wait to get home to try it on my linux box and see how it rates...
btw, off-topic rant. I'm currently pissed as hell at Netscape for forcing longtime netscape web users to change their username just so they can merge all of their account IDs with the same bloated name space as AOL. That means, stupid usernames like joe235753 for example... :( I had "weave@netscape.net" and now they want to force me to give it up. So much for my "lifetime e-mail address."
Indeed, though I'm not quite sure of the exact timeline here. The first DOM WD to mention getElementById was the July 1998 draft; IE4 predates that by some way doesn't it?
And while it's nice that IE5 now does pretty much support DOM, it also exposes a massive, overcomplex additional API, a lot of which is redundant. Go to MSDN's Web Workshop and look up DHTML Reference; woe betide anyone trying to learn DHTML from that.
Actually, woe betide anyone trying to learn DOM DHTML at all; I haven't found any good tutorials or references yet. Links, anyone?
I concur, but as an optional compile-in "IE4 support" module so webmasters can more easily test their DOM code on Mozilla. This'd be nice. Especially if it had a few other bits in that people tend to use, like [client|offset]top|width|etc.
I don't know about "won't"; if someone were to contribute such a thing to the Moz codebase I'm sure no-one would complain. :-) For the moment, I guess standard compliance rightly has a higher priority than back compatibility.
Amen to that. I would not like to see any support whatsoever for Netscape 4's wrong-headed and in practice thoroughly broken layer model, ever. I want it to die. As soon as possible. It makes my gums throb.
Pity so many people over here are still running their horrible old T-Online Netscape setups. Curses.
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This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
Netscape 6 beta 1 is but the first branded Mozilla browser. It is based on Mozilla, as Stronghold and Red Hat Secure Server are based on Apache. It adds features, has it's own version of the UI (which is completely replacable, not just the pictures on the buttons)
Whatch out for more browsers based on the Mozilla core. Mozilla itself is aimed at the developer, but there will be 'easy' versions, kids versions, embedded versions, etc. Long live Mozilla!
You got it wrong last time with all the fuss about a discussion on security related bugs in bugzilla, instead presenting it as a decision. Please get your journalistic facts straight.
Martijn Pieters, Software Engineer
Digital Creations, Creators of Zope
"The truth shall make ye fret" -- The Truth, Terry Pratchett
Netscape 6.0 isn't the end of mozilla anymore than Red Hat 6.2 is the end of Linux. You know that :-)
ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/netscape6/english/6_PR1 /windows/win32/sea/NetscapeSetup.exe
It works from behind a socks/proxy!
-mark
-mark
If your computer says LINUX, run...computers can't talk! [unless you have text-speech software]
Well, my Linux box is at home, and I have to use the NT4 Server here at work to test the build.. here're a few brief experiences so far:
Using the 260k installer, and only grabbing the executable and the (7 megs?!) Java2 stuff, the install went fairly speedily (45 mins) over a 56k connection (13mb in total, without any of the feedback agents, Net2Phone, etc). No reboots were necessary, which is a nice step up from the 4.x releases, and of course IE. (although IE, to be fair, 'upgrades' a lot of system files under Winx)
Ok, first run. No, thanks, I don't want to sign up to Netcenter. And yes, I really really don't want to. I'm sure you nice Netscape, er, AOL guys would never do anything bad with my name and email address, but I just want to browse.
Here it comes up, loading it is a bit faster than the 4.x tree. On we go to the Netcenter N6 page, ah, Dynamic HTML, finally implemented, nice moving 'Netscape' writing, fully selectable, etc. It's just eyecandy, but proves standards compliance. Wohoo!
On we go.. let's see how fast Yahoo loads, my 'bare-bones' example for comparing IE and Mozilla so far. Ok, it's fine, not as speedy as IE5, but it's not an 'integral part of the OS', is it?
Now the real test.. slashdot.org, loads fine, I enter my name - NO, I don't want you to remember my password, Moz.., er, Netscape - and on we go.
Ah. Hmm. Well, either Slashdot isn't regularly tested with Mozilla, or it's _supposed_ to look this way. Most of the 'spacing' between objects is gone, i.e. the banner at the top of the screen is now touching the actual page instead of having a bit of space between the two of them. Since I turned the icons off, the slashboxes are now vertically sligned against the very top of the actual page, whereas the 'default' page has the icons in the top right corner aligning the slashboxes with the rest of the main page at the top. Ah well, broken HTML it ain't (unless you try to validate it
[Side note: Copying text from Mozilla/N6 and pasting into Windows apps doesn't seem to work right now, neither using the right-click menu, nor the Edit menubar. Hmm. It lets me paste, but never copy. Especially since it blanks out the 'Paste' option after pasting, clearly thinking it has something buffered in the paste clipboard. Odd, but fixable.
Anyway, let's see what Netscape has to say about it on their main page. On we go, www.netscape.com... err.. crash. Hmm. Now, I'd have thought that they'd test their own homepage with their own browser? Nevermind, let's load it back up again - sigh, I didn't download the feedback client, so this bug will probably go unnoticed - and try it again.. and the page loads just fine. Odd. Very odd.
Anyway, let's have a look at the memory footprint.. task manager.. netscp6.exe..
29752k ??
I guess this is the memory footprint of a modern cutting-edge app.. but what were the two years of propaganda about 'small, fast app', 'efficient modular coding' etc. all about? I understand that IE5's memory usage (6megs right now) is partly due to the fact that a lot of its engine and parts are pre-loaded by the OS during startup.. and maybe under UNIX a lot of Netscape's code will reside in code already loaded by the X wm (widgets, etc).. but 30 megs? I just started the thing, it's not like hours of use have led it to leak memory like a bastard, accumulating dozens of megs of cached pages, etc, etc?
The actual netscape executable is 356k large, probably so it can start fast and give a speedy impression. The 'components' dir, full of to-be-loaded
And the 'theme'-ability (i.e. skins, etc) aren't even included! I even disabled the sidebar, and reduced most options like What's Related? and Internet Keywords to a minimum, so I'd have a bare-bones, speedy browser, and nothing else. I'm guessing that part of it is the Java2 stuff that's loaded at startup - but the memory usage still baffles me. If it preloads all it needs, I'd at least expect it to be as fast as IE, if not better, seeing how IE5 is at its core based on a browser MS bought from Spyglass which in turn was a rebranded NCSA Mosaic licensee from 5++ years ago. (Check 'About' in IE5 if you don't believe me.)
Ok, this is a pre-releases, still Alpha, not to be used widely, etc.. but seeing how the final
Ok, so in the time I needed to write this, (5 mins?) Netscape seems to have assimilated more memory for its personal needs. It now occupies 35 MB of RAM, and all I did to make it grow by 5 megs is to type some text in this textfield. Either it's doing funky stuff, or NT hates its guts. (and I'm waiting for people to post saying it's all NTs fault, and they've had Mozilla running on their 386 Linux boxes for months without crashes or memory problems
I'm sure this isn't the fault of Gecko, the rendering engine at its core, but the browser built around it seems to have a few architectural issues. I hope the Mozilla guys will be able to give it a swift kick in the pants before the Netscape6 release. Press coverage of a sluggish Netscape that doesn't match IE's capabilities would probably kill it off for good on non-UNIX platforms. I think I better go and kill off all Netscape-related processes now before it sucks up the remaining memory and I have to reboot the machine.
Apart from the memory issues, though, the Lizard seems to be a capable beast. Especially since this a pre-release do Slashdot Netscape's servers, grab the thing, and test it. With enough bugzilla reports, I'm sure the issues can be fixed in time for the release.
Alex T-B
PS: This post is coming to you courtesy of the fourth 'Submit' attempt. The Lizard keeps popping up a little box saying 'Connection refused by slashdot.org.. is that a HTTP error code. Which one? Please talk to me, Mozilla.
First of all, this is listed as Netscape 6 PR1, so its not gold or anything. Its just a prerelease version of there normal buggy .0 releae.
It looks just like mozilla m14. This should not come as a surprise to me, but I didn't know what to expect.
Does it leak memory? After an hour or so, three windows were using 45K of free memory, slowing my meager 64K laptop to lots of grinding.
Otherwise, despite the ugly N logo replacing the cute Mozillasoar, it looks pretty solid.
A final word about the integration. I have a netscape webmail account that uses the name "peteshaw". I stopped using it some time back when I accidentally posted it once on the usenet and found I was getting inunspamdated.
When I started up N6, it went through this whole routine told me that I would have to change my easy to remember name to something abstract and bizarre to satisfy its corporate renaming requirements. I think Netscape is merging the webmail name lists with AOL IM Service, which is integrated with Netscape IM. So now instead of "peteshaw" I need to come up with PeteShawSpankMyMonkey or something long and stupid.
So far its just annoying, but after trying 3 or 4 times to come up with a reasonable username, it gives me this error "Too many logins from this IP address, please wait 24 hours before logging on." On top of that, the only button I have to choose is marked "retry". What's a guy to do? Sit here staring at the retry button for 24 hours? It wasn't that hard to eventually work around, but its like ??????
So, needless to say I am skipping the netscape bundle of features for now, or at least for the next 24 hours. I might just stick with M14.
www.avacal.com -- the home page of pete shaw
This is the third time that slashdot has posted a story that got this wrong: Netscape 6 is NOT the final "Mozilla" browser. Netscape 6 incorporates some parts of the Mozilla efforts, but NS 6 is still a commercial product with proprietary code put out by Netscape Incorporated. Mozilla is not complete, and is still in testing. When it is finished, it will not be called "Netscape" anything, it will be "Mozilla." Please try to get this right.