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.

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Netscape advantages over Mozilla?

[crow]

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?

Interesting point of departure...

[corky6921]

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.

Re:why is mozilla engine so slow?

[bluephone]

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.

Re:netscape cares about the details...

[NutscrapeSucks]

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.

Re:Very nice...

[WNight]

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.

Re:Yippee!

[FFFish]

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.