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Netscape 6, PR 3 Released
A slew of people wrote in about the release of Netscape 6, PR 3
this morning -- Windows version, Linux 2.2, and Mac, assuming you speak English or Japanese. The word from Netscape is that French and German will be "soon." 'Course, I still think that apt-getting a certain Mozilla is all ya need, but hey.
Ok ok...I can deal with most things, but when I saw the Mozilla "installer" (i.e., downloader) picking up a package called "AOL On Desktop"--aod.xpi, I promptly became suspicious. I deleted the file before the Netscape Installer could install that .xpi, but then the installer crashed. How beautiful. They give you no choice on whether you want that or not. Looks like Netscape is doing the Real(tm) thing for us.
(Sigh).
-Julius X
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
Ok.... I'll admit it. I griped previously about the AOL on desktop thing...but what we really carea bout here is the browser.
Big selling point---the "Modern" skin looks much better. Its very smooth and doesn't clash with every other program I'm running. Many people will like it just because it looks good.
The stability is much improved, and its faster than Internet Explorer 5.5 in loading and in downloading web pages. One thing I noticed....I'm just sitting at Slashdot typing this right now, and Netscape 6 is using 34 MB of memory! That's a bit excessive, 2-3x what IE5 uses.
Overall...I think PR3 is a huge improvement over PR2...and could be the best Netscape release to date. I'm actually looking forward to the final release now...as long as they cut down on the memory usage.
I wonder how Mozilla M18 will compare to this.
-Julius X
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
They have already branched. M18 will be released from the trunk (as opposed to the NS 6 branch) sometime later this week.
Gerv
With the creation of the mozilla-gtk widget many new mozilla-likes have sprouted up, but i think Skipstone may be one of the greatest of lightweight browsers. (Of course a full mozilla/netscape session is needed for SSL or other features)
isomerica.net | Foonetic IRC
Somehow I don't think this is the best thing Netscape should be doing. I recall a lot of people complaining that NSpr2 was 'too early' -- not ready enough for any kind of release -- even though it was released concurrently with Mozilla M17. Remember, this version is being dropped even though M18 hasn't come out yet.
As a 'business' decision I couldn't really care less about Netscape as a company. Politically though, NS6 is the browser to watch for for a lot of people, not Mozilla, and a lot of people are mistaking NS6prx with 'the new Netscape'. And they're getting scared off. As a webdesigner, I do not want to use MSIE but it's slowly getting so I have to use it more and more often - both professionally and personaly.
jedrek
-- polish ccs mirror
Using PR3 now.
Very pretty.
Quite small to download and install.
Skinnable.
Slightly better DOM and Javascript rendering than 4.72.
All of which is good.
But, most importantly, it's _STILL_ not as quick as IE. Pages seem to take twice as long (not as long as in 4.7 or in any of the Mozilla builds though) to load in PR3 than in IE5.
Sorry, it pains me to say it, but Microsoft STILL have the better browser.
--
jambo
system.admin.without.a.clue
-- js.
Netscape 6 is a full-featured yet lean browser that bucks the trend in software bloat. Netscape 6 was developed from the ground up to be as small as possible while still providing a rich feature set.
It's always amazing how differently geeks and marketing people see things.
ebw
This is definatly the best version, even better then the nightly Mozilla binaries for Win32. Fast, clean interface and quick install. The Windows Installer was actually nice and didn't require a reboot or anything. It also imported my mozilla cache/cookies and everything just fine. I hope these 2 browsers don't split up very much when they developers break the tree. It works great, using it to post this message. Very nice interface, love the new scrollbars and the integration with the netscape websites and instant messanger is a nice feature. I don't understand how that is going backwards. Anyhow, i recommend it. Works with my oracle system as well, and it appears the security manager works now with all my https sites. congrats netscape, nice looking product! This should have been PR1 :)
if you want the complete tarball monster instead of the stupid little 62+k installer...
2 /sea/
ftp://ftp2. net scape.com/pub/netscape6/english/6_PR3/unix/linux2
-'fester
On the Windows platform, Mozilla's still quite small. It's only on Mac and Linux that it gets huge.
I think this has to do with XPCOM. For some reason, when the Mozilla team decided to do a cross-platform component-based architecture, they made it in such a way that it conveniently wraps around Windows' COM stuff. That means they don't have to include it on Windows, which trims out quite a lot of stuff.
Hey, how else could you explain why the Windows Mozilla downloads are a full third smaller than the Mac or Linux ones?
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I had to delete my .mozilla directory, otherwise the thing core dumps. Also, the installer does not seem to work through a proxy, but the entire download is available from their ftp site.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.