Slashdot Mirror
A First Look at Netscape 7
David_Bloom writes: "PC-WORLD has released an article giving a rundown of the just-released Preview Release 1 of Netscape 7. An especially interesting feature in this new version is tabbed browsing, which allows you to have multiple web pages open at once in one window, which you can view using a tab-based MDI."
I've used the rudimentary predecessor to tabbed browsing (Open Link in New Window...) for a while, and I loved that it helps me preserve my stream-of-consciousness while scanning the news.
I'd hoped tabbed browsing would spare me the memory overhead of having all those windows open, but it doesn't have a crucial feature; hotkey cycling through tabs.
After I open a bunch of interesting stories in new windows on Slashdot, for example, I can Ctrl-Tab between windows according to the whims of my rampant ADD.
Alt-Tab between programs, Ctrl-Tab between documents seems to be a pretty accepted convention in the Win32 environment.
Am I missing an undocumented keyboard shortcut here?
Snickersnee3: Build your own 3-watt Luxeon Star headlamp from scratch
Less a result of object oriented programming, I would hazard, and more component oriented API. MS COM objects, though hellish beasts of complexity themselves, mitigate and abstract user application complexity. The COM model is in mild competition with the markup model of XUL and XPCOM seen in Mozilla/Netscape, which makes for an interseting debacle, philosophically if not just technically.
They have integrated AIM and ICQ, there was a time a year or two ago where you could sign into ICQ using an AIM client in one beta version. They don't publicly integrate them, because then they would be closer to admitting that interoperability is possible. They'd rather continue claiming that other clients are a security threat to their network.
It's a load of hooey if you ask me
AOL didn't buy netscape purely because Mozilla is a great product, they bought it because the Netscape name has a huge amount of recognition.
So yeah, Mozilla's better... but who's heard of it? Not joe-sheep user.
Eh? Having developed a site that makes not insignificant use of CSS and DOM, I can tell you that at one point in development of the site, if you used Mozilla you could notice the difference, and that wasn't a bad thing. In the end, I used a number of hacks to make sure the site looked correct in IE, but it was a pain. And don't get me started on that awful Opera.
NS6 may have been poor in many areas, but its rendering engine got a lot more right than IE6 does now. NS7/Mozilla1.0RC2 corrects many of NS6's shortcomings and still managed to pull even further ahead of IE in its support for CSS and DOM. After all, why doesn't IE6 support fixed positioning? Konqueror 2.2.2 does for crying out loud.
IE doing something wrong is not an excuse to copy them. I applaud the Mozilla team for not following down the slippery slope.
"Sorry about the flame, I really like the browser. But the whole themes thing has started to look kind of silly."
no, you've *really* missed the point here; the whole theme thing is just beginning. the language for writing themes has been under development, so if you wrote a theme for one release of Mozilla / Netscape, it would break in the next release. 90% of the point of having Mozilla 1.0 is to *freeze* this language (the APIs), and once these things are frozen people can get to work devloping *with* them
But of course I want to refute the individual lies and misinformation too, just because you are an insufferable moron:
AOL isn't going to be stupid enough to try foisting a noticeably slower browser on their users
Mozilla RC2 pops up from a cold start (hasn't been run before) in about 4 seconds on my machine. IE takes -- guess what? -- about 4 seconds from a cold start too. And that's not using Quickstart, which would've boosted Mozilla's performance.
People are used to IE, most sites were designed with it in mind
I'm sure you mean that "web pages won't render unless you use IE." That's pure BS. I always install Mozilla or derivatives (e.g., Netscape) for machines I support and not once has a page failed to render. Oh wait, by "most sites" you must mean MSN.
nothing can change the fact that, when it comes to the simple activity of browsing, the MS product gives a smoother user experience.
What the blazing hell does "smoother" mean? Both Opera and Mozilla provide what is clearly a superior browsing experience. Maybe by "smoother" you mean "more apt to get hacked by a malicious script" or "capable of having your bookmarks, start menu, desktop, and registry tampered with by web sites with questionable motives."
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
Mozilla is not slower on my box then IE is. It has a slightly, and I mean slightly longer initial startup time, which is amazing since the core of IE is already loaded before I click its icon.
MS hasn't done a great job at all. Their browser is a sieve chock full of security holes, and so tightly integrated into the OS, many of those holes are frighteningly dangerous.
They chased netscape for the first 3 versions, then passed them on the fourth version, drove them out of business with bundling, and haven't really done squat with their browser since then. Is IE6 really that much different than IE4? Hardly. Talk about stagnation...but that is what happens when you have no competition to worry about.