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Netscape 6.2

lylonius writes: "Netscape today released version 6.2 of its browser based on Mozilla. Downloads for a variety of platforms and languages are available. You can also check out the release notes. This release comes off the Mozilla 0.9.4 branch, and is the third major release from Netscape using Mozilla." Kmeleon also has a release today, if you'd like your web with a little more browsing and little less AOL-promotion.

16 of 533 comments (clear)

  1. Netscape? no thanks. by snoozerdss · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I lost faith in Netscape after they stoped developing 4x. 6x has always seemed bloated and to slow and since it's based on Mozilla I might as well use mozilla. It seemes to be more up to date then netscape and runs just fine for me.

    --
    Snoozer.
  2. .95 is really fast by Mr.roboto · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I use it on win32, it's really fast especially when loaded into memory in advance, regardless it's really fast. Almost comparable to IE, and unlike NS4 it's fairly stable in Win 9X.

    --
    Don't call my crazy, that's what they called me back in the home!
  3. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  4. Re:why is mozilla engine so slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The problem is that every widget is hand drawn instead of using the native OS widgets. So scrollbars, drop down boxes, etc. are all taking up rendering time.

    Until they drop the self-rendering of objects, Netscape and Mozilla will always be slower renderers than IE.

  5. Netscape advantages over Mozilla? by crow · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Everyone keeps pointing out that you're better off downloading the latest Mozilla instead. And while I tend to agree (I'm using the latest nightly build right now), my understanding is that the Netscape release adds in commercial features that aren't in Mozilla.

    Does anyone care to comment on what features Netscape 6.2 offers that aren't in Mozilla?

  6. Re:Older version by arthurs_sidekick · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Because you want the branded version with all the proprietary gewgaws. Mozilla is pre-1.0, Netscape 6.2 is released to the public. That's about it.

    Chances are, if you know about the existence of Mozilla, you don't want the Netscape branded releases, although here and there there could be sites that will recognize Netscape and not Mozilla -- but chances are, you don't frequent such sites anyhow, if you know of the existence of Mozilla.

    --
    "Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
  7. Interesting point of departure... by corky6921 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It used to be that Netscape offered official builds of Netscape for anything from AIX to Solaris. Now it looks like they are switching gears and only offering official builds for Windows, MacOS, and Linux.

    I would say that this speaks volumes about what sort of client platform most of their customers are using, and how the UNIX client landscape has changed recently. A few years ago, anti-Microsoft or pro-UNIX people (some one, some the other, some both) were seen running anything from HP-UX to OS/2. Netscape, accordingly, released versions of Netscape for nearly every OS. Now, these groups have condensed into the people running MacOS X and Linux. The people running something else as a client have slowly faded away, until these clients were considered a niche market. This is shown even by Slashdot, which has switched from "news for nerds" to an almost exclusively Linux-advocacy site.

    This bodes well for Linux and MacOS, both of which have their markets. I am seeing more people use both of them not because they have an axe to grind with Microsoft, but purely for curiosity and learning's sake.

    But what of the other client platforms? Obviously, Mozilla is still being released for them, but if official, "supported" browser/office software is no longer available, will anything but Linux/MacOS/Windows as a client go away? Or has it already?

    Just an interesting trend, IMHO.

  8. Re:why is mozilla engine so slow? by bluephone · · Score: 4, Insightful
    This is just another load of crap. YEs, Moz uses widgets internal to itself rather than native OS widgets, although you wouldn't know it to look at them. They're non-native for a few reasons. Using native widgets would seriously cut down on the number of supported platforms, since the few developers working on the project would be further taxed by translating for half a dozen platforms. This was a design choice made years ago now. it doesn't slow down rendering a bit, because they're not "hand drawn" (whatever that's supposed to mean to a computer) but generated using a set of GFX that can be styled on the fly. It's not drawing buttons and such, it merely puts together a set of "building blocks" to make them. There's almost zero impact on performance.

    This reminds me of a troll that used to hanf around the mozilla newsgroups that in the end just made a joke of himself. I even wound up parodying him just for more laughs. The whole argument against XUL is stupid these days.

    And lastly, just because it DOES use internal widgets, that does NOT mean that it can't outperform IE. Mozilla as a whole is slower than Gecko-based browsers because Mozilla DOES more than they do. The backends on Mozilla and K-Meleon and it's brethren are vastly different. It's like comparing a Yugo to an Aircraft carrier.

    --
    jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
  9. Re:slowness by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I don't know about Netscape 6.2, but Mozilla 0.9.4 in Windows with the -turbo option enabled loads faster than IE5/6.

    Why?

    Because it loads the browser into memory when the computer boots, JUST LIKE IE.

    Now that the playing field is level, Mozilla still wins.

    Refute that.

  10. Re:netscape cares about the details... by NutscrapeSucks · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Actually, I would say that your management was right on. As mozilla.org says: We make binary versions of of Mozilla available for testing purposes only!. We provide no end user support.

    This is something that's missed by the "Mozilla advocates" that hang on Slashdot and Mozillazine and other places. Mozilla is not an end-user browser. It's for voluntary developers and voluntary QA people only. No non-nerds even know what Mozilla is, so if you try to encourage people to use it, the funny looks they are giving you are well grounded.

    So, if you are worried about a MS-dominated WWW, encourage people to try Netscape 6.2. Don't even mention Mozilla -- it detracts from the message. Unfortunately, lots of (normal) people took a look at the horrific 6.0PR releases and the terrible 6.0 final and need some encouragement to take another look at the releases that actually work.

    --
    Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
  11. Re:Older version by MindStalker · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Actually the sensable thing is rm /home/mozilla/* -rf
    easy simple no question about what it will do.

  12. Re:Very nice... by WNight · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yep. A free, ad-free, open-source, embeddable version of Opera.

    With Opera you can get it free, or ad-free, not both.

    You also can't get the source, extend the functionality (Spellchecker.xpi) or embed the rendering engine into a project of yours (Galleon, K-Meleon, or anything else).

    Opera is great, but there are many things for which it's not the best.

  13. Re:slowness by lambsonic · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The CSS and extensions that IE support are artificially important because of its huge market-share. Mozilla is a better browser for standards, and that is my only claim.

    Have you tried developing standard CSS? Once you do, you will realize that Mozilla supports a lot more CSS than IE, and Mozilla is much more stable in its rendering. IE will often forget where it has drawn and can't keep a list in a straight line. Explain to me IE's bugs on this page (With the CSS bloated for IE) and this other page (roll over the links in the "recent posts" list) and notice how slow it is on the navbar. Mozilla doesn't have any of these problems.

    Even looking at an outdated chart of CSS bugs, Mozilla is at least as good at CSS. Considering that development on IE is crawling compared to everything else, Mozilla has much better support. I actually think that Mozilla has the only sane CSS implementation of all the browsers.

    --
    # make clean sig
  14. Re:Yippee! by FFFish · · Score: 3, Insightful

    WTF are you on about? The bit you refer to looks like this:

    h1 {
    color : #333333;
    }

    How is that "so many tabs"? It's *ONE* tab. Hell, it's a common CSS structure.

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  15. Re:Older version by Lac · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Whoa. You realize your cron starts up in $HOME, and if that `cd` for some reason returns an error...

    Try cd /home/mozilla && rm -rf *

    I now that geeks use ampersands, but can you tell me what the hell is wrong with rm -rf /home/mozilla/*? Simpler is better. And writing rm -rf * is almost always a bad idea. You will edit this cron job again someday, and probably get it wrong.

  16. Re:slowness IE by simetra · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I've always found Internet Exploder to be dreadfully slow. Every so often I would get angry with Netscape, and try IE, only to go back to Netscape. Various browser versions, various Win OSes. IE is just a big slug.

    --

    "Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou