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.

Comments

Good for the average joe

[NotAnotherReboot]

This is good for the user who doesn't know enough about Mozilla to go and download it often. This is for the person who likes to be able to go to Netscape's page, download their latest browser and just go with it. More people will get a newer Mozilla branch which is more stable and faster, which is good.

For the Slashdot community you're still better off downloading the Mozilla milestones instead of waiting for a Netscape branch every so often.

Re:Yippee!

[hexix]

Heh, the funny thing about that whole situation is it renders perfectly in mozilla (I just tried it and it seemed to look perfect, I didn't notice any errors). But I tried it in IE on the mac's at my college and it rendered everything wrong, a lot of backgrounds were missing on things and stuff was in the wrong place.

So I think it's pretty obvious microsoft was full of it and was just banning browsers for not being microsoft.

Re:why is mozilla engine so slow?

[mgkimsal2]

What the hell does ASP have to do with anything? ASP just spits out what the developer tells it - someone would still purposefully have to put in bad HTML to make a bad browser choke/slowdown.

Cache not optimal?

[mikael]

Is the cache in Mozilla not optimal? If you compare Moz against Opera in regard to flipping pages back and then forward, there is a huge speed advantage for Opera. Is it because Mozilla caches entire pages, and re-renders them when you hit back? I think Mozilla is as fast as any other browser in regards to rendering complex pages, but the case of flippnig back and forward is rather slow. Anynone know why?

Mikael

Re:alas, not 0.9.5

[sab39]

The two things that 0.9.5 provided (link tag support and tabbed browsing) were probably the major reason why Netscape didn't want to use 0.9.5. They wanted stabilization and bugfixes, not new features. I for one am glad they used 0.9.4 for this very reason - the problem with 6.0 was its poor stability, and if 6.2 has a reputation for being rock-solid, that'd be great for the future perception of Netscape in general.

As for the link toolbar, there are good reasons why it's disabled by default: namely a 5% speed penalty on every page load, regardless of whether it's in use or not. If you like and use links, this is a price worth paying, but Mozilla has a "zero tolerance" policy for this kind of performance hit. This is bug 103097 and I'll be working on it as soon as someone with C++ knowledge can make the necessary underlying changes in the C++ code. There are also some negative interactions with the tabbed browsing feature which will need to be resolved before it can be turned on by default.

In the meantime, be glad that Netscape chose the earlier release rather than shipping something buggy, like the current state of the link (sorry "site navigation") toolbar and tabbed browsing.

Stuart.

PS Thanks to /. for adding link tags! It's great to visit sites and actually see the toolbar in use :)

Re:Netscape? no thanks.

[Cardinal]

The bad thing is there's 10% of the userbase that seems to be holding out for good on Netscape 4.x -- they aren't interested in IE, they aren't interested in Netscape 6. That essentially means that modern HTML authoring will never really come into vogue, and we will be stuck in 1995 until Microsoft actually finally gets the balls to 'fork' the WWW so that their stuff only works on their platform.

Nah. Netscape 4 holdouts will find themselves left behind as more and more web shops stop caring about making their sites look good in NS4, and just worry about IE6/NS6.

This is a good thing. Netscape 4's time has passed.

Re:Netscape? no thanks.

[BitwizeGHC]

Nah. Netscape 4 holdouts will find themselves left behind as more and more web shops stop caring about making their sites look good in NS4, and just worry about IE6/NS6.

ITYM "just worry about IE6". The large but dwindling Netscape 4.x user base is what kept Web developers from saying "fuck it" and turning the Web into an IE-exclusive platform these past four years. When you have 90% of the installed base, diminishing returns dictate that to third-party developers, interoperability with your competitors' offerings will be, at best, an afterthought.

But it gets worse! When Netscape 4 finally fades into irrelevance, the MSN.com lockout will be only the beginning as non-IE users find themselves shunned from more and more sites. Content providers will rely on proprietary components to supply DRM with their content, including HTML, and again, diminishing returns will dictate the OS/client platform: IE on Windows and possibly Mac.