Netscape 7.1 Released

Phil writes "Netscape has just released the eagerly-awaited Netscape 7.1 (previously known by its codename, 'Buffy') for Windows, Mac OS and Linux. The new version is based on Mozilla 1.4, which is due out later today. Netscape 7.1 features many improvements over 7.02 including even better CSS support, spam filters, find-as-you-type, automatic image resizing, more customization via about:config, Web development tools, Palm synchronization and more. Plus, for the first time, ChatZilla (Mozilla's IRC client) is included in the full install. More information can be found at Netscape Browser Central and in this MozillaZine article. The release is available from Netscape's download page, via FTP or on CD."

Comments

How does mozilla handle old caches?

[Thinkit3]

I hate getting old data because the browser is caching. Is it easy to totally turn caching off? Under certain circumstances, in mac IE, you can even hit reload and get an old copy.

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[Acidangl]

shift click reload, pulls a new version the page

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[bgarcia]

This is one of my pet peeves about Mozilla/Netscape.

If you really, really want to reload a page, you have to hold down the shift key while clicking on the reload button.

I have no idea why the developers think it is useful to have a reload button that does something less than a full reload, nor do I know why they believe that a "shift-reload" (which is completely undocumented BTW) is an appropriate user interface for doing a real reload.

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[Patik]

If you really, really want to reload a page, you have to hold down the shift key while clicking on the reload button.

I've heard this before, but my experience tells me otherwise. When I tap F5 on a frequently updated page such as Slashdot or Fark.com, new stories appear without having to hold down shift.

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[unapersson]

Reload does really do a reload, but I think it may just compare the timestamps and only get a fresh copy if the page has actually changed. Shift-reload, reloads everything, including images, stylesheets etc. whether they are cached at proxies or not.

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[DNS-and-BIND]

I have the opposite problem. IE loads every page, regardless of whether it has the page on hand already or not. Especially irritating on those 360k-per-page web-based discussion boards, going back and forth on threads. And you can forget keeping any text you type in a text box if you go forward or backward in history.

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[Politburo]

Without using shift, the browser will still used cached images. Therein lies the difference.

Also, there's a slight chance that hitting F5 is the equivalent of shift+clicking reload.

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most CGI systems have a "Cache-Control: no-cache" header in the web pages, so the Web Browser does not cache them.

This is true of any system that has dynamic content.

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't a problem with IE. Most Dynamic Content sites, like Slashdot, or Discussion Boards have a Header that turns off cache for the page.

"Cache-Control: no-cache"

Have fun...

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[DrXym]

Check your cache settings. You can tell Mozilla / Netscape to reload a page in various ways from every time, never, once per session or when the page has expired.

Basically Moz / NS tries to do the expected thing by default, but sites are inconsistent about their expiry settings and sometimes it doesn't work the way you think it should.

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[mobets]

I find the prefbar handy for such things. It has a Clear Cache button. The newer versions even have checkboxes for turning caching off.

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[dschoettlin]

shift click reload

but what if you don't have two hands free while browsing for pr0^H^H^H stuff?

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[zapfie]

Yeah.. I seem to run across that problem alot in many browsers.. it's unfortunate.

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[Anonymous Coward]

Disable caching you wanker.

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[DNS-and-BIND]

No, it happens everywhere. It's just the problem is much worse on pages that take forever to load, for obvious reasons. I can go to any page, click on a link, and go back to the preceding page, and IE will load the entire thing again. Been there, seen the logfiles.

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's allowed but not recommended behaviour. Browsers are not supposed to compare cache parameters on back & forward. It's part of the HTTP spec, where the term "SHOULD NOT" is used.

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[36526542DD]

asdf

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[JimDabell]

I hate getting old data because the browser is caching.

If that is happening to you with Mozilla, there is probably one of the following things going on:

1. There is a transparent proxy sitting between you and the website that is screwing things up (talk to your ISP, it's probably their fault).
2. The website has either completely ignored caching, set things up wrongly, or prefers things the way they are.

HTTP has some very specific headers that deal with caching. If the server tells clients "must-revalidate", then you should always get the correct content. If the people who are responsible for the websites you are talking about do not do this, then talk to them. Unless the servers tell clients that the information is updated, you can't blame the clients for showing you cached data. It's the way HTTP works.

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[Anonymous Coward]

A normal reload just checks with the server to see if the data has changed; a shift-reload will always get the data from the server (ignoring the cached copy) and ask any proxy in the path to get directly from the server.

Most of the time, a normal reload is enough (if the page has changed but hasn't expired from the cache, it will detect it). A shift-reload is rarely needed.

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[4of12]

I can see where both a complete reload and a partial reload that doesn't retrieve BW-hungry images would be useful functionality for different users in different circumstances. Picking one or the other is going to annoy someone.

The latter behavior seems useful on limited resource connections (like most home connections), but in the big corporate world there's enough BW and CPU power to completely rebuild the page from scratch.

Perhaps the Reload button ought to be configurable to do either behavior by default, and to have an optional menu, just like the Back button (that permits both Back by 1 URL and Back by more than 1 URL), so that Reload has optional options, as well as configurable default behavior.

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[frodo from middle ea]

I have never managed to get that thing work.
Nor on Mozilla neither on firebird
And I have tried this on windows, solaris, linux. Using release binaries, nightly builds and even self compiles binaries.
There are a couple of extensions which act as substitue to options window. Like the one you mentioned, one creates a drop down menu item in title bar.
None ofthese affect the options , in my case, i always have to set the options from options window.

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[civilizedINTENSITY]

I browse with javascript and java disabled (mostly). If I find I need javascript, I need to reload after toggling javascript on. Reloading from cache is faster.

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[DavidTC]

It's apparently completely unknown among web browser designers, but web browsers are not supposed to generate any network traffic at all on back and forward buttons. They're supposed to be backwards and forwards in what you have viewed, not 'where you're been'.

Of course, absolutely no browser's back and forward buttons actually follows this standard. (Or, alternately, they do not possess the commands the HTTP spec says they should have, and instead possess completely different commands named the same thing.)

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[Pieroxy]

I have tried "Reload" and "Shift Reload" looking at the logs of my webserver and I saw the same crap... IE is still not downloading straight but asking for an updated version.

This was on PC, I don't know about Macs...

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even with shift-click-reload I find that it is unreliable in loading a fresh copy of external stylesheets. This makes testing CSS a royal pain, requiring turning cache off completely.

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I hate getting old data because the browser is caching. Is it easy to totally turn caching off?

Edit -> Preferences... -> Advanced -> Cache.
Change the "Cache:" field value to 0. No more caching.

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[dastrike]

ctrl+shift+r
Only one hand needed. :)

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[tigga]

I have tried "Reload" and "Shift Reload" looking at the logs of my webserver and I saw the same crap... IE is still not downloading straight but asking for an updated version.

It's all about Netscape, you know...

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[Reziac]

Dunno if it's still the same, but in older NS, CTRL-SHIFT-R will do a forced reload. And it only needs one hand!!

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[nicky_d]

shift click reload
but what if you don't have two hands free while browsing for pr0^H^H^H stuff?

Well, that's a job for sticky keys, which is presumably what you'll have.

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[JimDabell]

Without using shift, the browser will still used cached images. Therein lies the difference.

Not quite. It still issues the request for each image, it just does a "conditional GET", which means it asks "send me the image if it's been updated." Usually the server can respond with 304 Not Modified, which means it doesn't have to transmit the image again (so you get the impression that it's just blindly using the cache because there is no download time). If the image has been updated though, it will simply respond with a 200 and the updated image.

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[bgarcia]

Check your cache settings. You can tell Mozilla / Netscape to reload a page in various ways from every time, never, once per session or when the page has expired.

But I don't want to change how caching behaves when I'm simply revisiting pages - I just want it to do a reload when I hit the reload button.

Re:How does mozilla handle old caches?

[Planet Bob]

shift click reload

but what if you don't have two hands free while browsing for pr0^H^H^H stuff?

shift-ctrl-r or shift-cmd-r depending on your platform

If that doesn't work for you, clean your keyboard and raise it well above your knees.

eagerly-awaited ?

[nurb432]

Not by everyone, some of us are eagerly awaiting Konq 3.2 instead...

Re:eagerly-awaited ?

[Anonymous Coward]

too bad u dont have it, I already do since ages :-D, use CVS !

Re:eagerly-awaited ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, where did it say it was eagerly awaited by YOU?

Re:eagerly-awaited ?

[t0ny]

Im amazed at how fanatical people are about what browser they are using. I started with Netscape way back in the day, switched to IE 3.02 because Nutscrape crashed ALL the time, and have been using MS's browsers ever since.

Sometimes its nice to have something just work, especially when its something as basic as just a web browser. The way I see it, all the 'new features' that they added are just going to bring along new bugs to screw things up. Enjoy!

Re:eagerly-awaited ?

[meta.chris]

In Soviet Russia?

Re:Netscape?

[agentZ]

Yes, because they (hopefully) will be feeding AOL with a new browser to wean users away from IE.

That being said, however, what advantages does the Netscape version of Mozilla have?

I'll continue to use Mozilla

[sstory]

I'll continue to use Mozilla firebird and thunderbird, thank you very much. Why? Same code, basically, but Mozilla doesn't litter every spot on my computer with AOL icons, in my favorites, start menu, programs menu, etc.

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[truthsearch]

Thunderbird's not at v0.1 yet, so I've been sticking with Mozilla's current mail client. How is thunderbird at the moment? Is it stable enough to switch?

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[OmniVector]

this is one of the things that has always bothered me when i see netscape installed on someone's machine. To the average user netscape and IE are the only two browsers in existance.

mozilla has very little exposure outside the geek world. i know it's catching on, but 99% of the people at work have never heard of it.

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[garcia]

I am VERY annoyed with AIM doing the same thing on Install.

Click here to DE-SELECT Netscape.com as your homepage.

Do you want AIM icons on your desktop and start menu (check here for no (each)).

Yet the fucking installer STILL puts AIM icons (AOL for Broadband) on my Desktop and an AIM icon in the quick launch tray...

Maybe if they stop this horseshit for AOL I will think about it. Until then I will stick with IE on my Windows machine.

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

How long did it take to delete those? Oh about 3 seconds... I forgot about them already.

Try Mozilla, same thing minus aol stuff.

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[DrXym]

But neither does the Netscape branded version. There are a few extra buttons here or there, but for the most part they can be disabled from the pref dialog. I don't know what icons you mean either since it didn't put any there when I installed it.

The principle difference these days between the two is that the NS branded version has a spell checker, radio (Spinner) and AIM client built in and offers to installs stuff like Shockwave, JRE, WinAmp etc. It also is supported in the sense that security issues see new point releases whereas you must wait for the next Mozilla release to pick up the change. Otherwise they are almost identical. I notice you can even install the JS debugger and DOM inspector via a 'developer pack' option.

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[kelnos]

To the average user netscape and IE are the only two browsers in existance.

i would venture to say that the average user is even unaware of netscape these days. i'm a university student - i find that an interesting perspective since most of the people here get a new computer to bring with them to college. back when i started 4 years ago i saw netscape all over. now most of the 1st- and 2nd-years i know have their fresh windows installs and never bother to download netscape (4.x or 7.x) because IE is fine for their purposes.

there is the random anomalous person i see using netscape 4.x (almost always not on windows). i don't know anyone using netscape 7.x. fortunately most of the more tech-savvy people i know are using mozilla (or i gently recommend it every now and then).

on a related note, why use netscape 7 over mozilla? perhaps the integration is a little better, but i don't see anything essential in netscape7 that i can't get out of mozilla. plus with mozilla i get much more frequent releases and the option to grab a nightly or build my own (granted these last two options don't interest that many people). as an added bonus you lose the "netscape activation" and all that bundled AOL crap.

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[resignator]

his point isnt the time it took to delete the icons. Mabey you like it when shit does the opposite of what you asked? Ask me not to punch you in the face please :)

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[pen]

MyIM will remove those icons, as well as the ads on the AIM window. Also provides logging features. Doesn't work with AIM 5.x.

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

How did it take me three seconds? I had to find these items each and everytime I install it (I install AIM and delete AIM everyday).

When I say, "NO ICONS ON THE DESKTOP" and "NO ICONS ON THE START MENU", that does NOT mean that they should be on the quick launch tray, etc.

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[rowanxmas]

I have not been able to get Thunderbird to run on my RH8 box, I always get a (thunderbird-bin:21852): Gdk-WARNING **: gdkdrawable-x11.c:787 drawable is not a pixmap or window.

Any thoughts anybody?

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[Derang()]

You don't have to wait for the next point release...grab a nightly :)

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

...of all the free alts out there for aol chatting ( and icq, and msn, and irc ), you use the AIM Client.

You deserve what you get.

( psst: gaim, trillian )

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[IthnkImParanoid]

IE and Netscape aren't just the only browsers to the average user, but to most relatively advanced users as well. My father is an electrical engineer and programs occasionally. He has no skills at all (for example, he can't grasp the concept of a pointer), but he's still a long way from being scared of the control panel.

Whenever I talk to my parents I always hear them complaining about how much Netscape 6 sucks, but they refuse to use IE (good for them). I've tried so many times to say "use mozilla or opera" but it just doesn't get through. Finally I installed opera 7 on my mom's computer since she's the more clueless of the two ("I connect to the internet through Netscape. Or through google. Should I try connecting through yahoo?"). Hopefully they'll catch on.

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

I would much prefer to support the company that is offering the service. I am not against having ads streamed to my desktop to pay for the service that we don't pay for.

GAIM is NOT an acceptable alternate in Windows (or Linux for that matter) as far as I am concerned. I have very little interest in trying Trillian either.

I will stick to what is tried and true.

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[noahbagels]

Those Damn Motha-F**kers.

I'm seriously pissed. They should have said:

Do you want to install our advertisement displaying system that ignores your user input, home page selection, and other settings?

AOL: I hate you.
I will never use your software, unless it happens to be the only broadband in the whole entire world.

Netscape Staff: You suck - if you even exist anymore - seems like 90% of your work is adding on crapware installers for AOL rather than doing good work - you should go work for doubleclick or other add F**ks.


Mozilla peeps: thanks for your awesome browser - still loads faster on my slow work machine than Netscrape.

There. Done.

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[illsorted]

The Winamp installer places an AOL icon on the desktop now, too.

Ugh.

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[Guppy06]

I can delete icons quite easily, and they annoy me far less than IE's inability to block pop-ups.

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[rainmanjag]

Maybe if they stop this horseshit for AOL I will think about it. Until then I will stick with IE on my Windows machine.

What like Microsoft does do that horseshit? Ever look at a fresh install of Windows? IE's on your desktop and it's not even a link to IE... Same for Outlook, and you can't remove that either... Outlook Express is in your quicklaunch by default, so is IE... MSN icons are all over your desktop... MSN Messenger is in your quick launch toolbar...

Everybody does it on Windows... Real is probably the worst of them all... but this isn't a reason not to use RealPlayer any more than it's a reason not to use AIM or Netscape...

-jag

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[truthsearch]

I don't know RH8, but I'd venture a guess that it's due to GTK versions. I can't find what version of GTK thunderbird requires, but RH8's is probably just a little old. Thunderbird probably uses GTK2, which for Mandrake requires a separate set of RPMs than GTK 1.x. Good luck.

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[drunk_as_in_beer]

...of all the free alts out there for aol chatting ( and icq, and msn, and irc ), you use the AIM Client. You deserve what you get. ( psst: gaim, trillian )

The options under Linux are great, I use GAIM. But on Windows things aren't so great. GAIM under Windows is buggy, though this may be more of an issue with the GTK port. Trillian is bloated and buggy, maybe the pro version is better, but if the free version is that bad, it can't be worth the money. Though I admit, those are the only Windows options I've tried, there are other options that I haven't tried, but those seem to be the popular ones.

When I'm at work using Windows, I just use AOL's AIM client and strip out the ads. I have no problems with it, really.

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[mobets]

Sombody hasn't installed XP. (maybe that is a good thing) The only thing on the desktop is the Recycle Bin. There are no Outlook express or MSN Messenger icons in the quicklaunch bar, which is off by default. Also, TweekUI has always been able to hide the Outlook and IE icons on the desktop.

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

You should get QCD. Fast, small, free, supports many WinAmp plugins.

http://www.quinnware.com/

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[DrXym]

That's fine if you're comfortable with that, but most normal people and most companies are not going to deploy a nightly with god knows what new bugs and semi-implemented features to fix one exploit. If / when Netscape 7.1.1 appears it will be built from the 1.4 branch meaning the only things that have changed between this and the last are fixes for stability, performance and security.

It is possible however with Mozilla basically horked until Firebird / Thunderbird are developed into workable alternatives to the suite, that we'll see occasional point releases from 1.4 for Mozilla too.

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[Steve Franklin]

Never could get WinAmp to work right. And deinstalling it seemed to go on forever. I'm still finding little pieces of it randomly strewn about my computer. The Real Player seems to do everything much better than any of the other Mickey Mouse players out there. Can't for the life of me figure what the big deal is. As for Mozilla, well, I think it's all a matter of beating a dead horse. MS has won the browser game until somebody comes up with something entirely different. Kind of like all those guys out there re-enacting some Civil War battle or other. Give it a rest already. Nobody's ever going to take Cemetery Ridge no matter how many times they play it over again.

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

Netscape is precisely for the people who don't want to grab nightlies or build their own. Problem is, as you've pointed out, most of these people don't know what a browser is: they don't open their browser, they "go to the internet."

Keeping other browsers going involves being proactive. I do tech support for OS and Internet issues as one of my dozen or so hats. The other day I sent out a message telling people we were no longer supporting Netscape 4.x: it was a pos when it came out, and it's an old pos today. I then encouraged people to upgrade to Netscape 7.02 (didn't realize 7.1 would be out today). Half of them didn't know there was a new version of Netscape, and the other half had heard that Netscape 6 was terrible and decided never to upgrade again. I now have a dozen Netscape 4 users and a half-dozen Netscape 7 users, and the latter seem much happier than the former.

What this also did was to let the IE users know that there was a quality version of Netscape available. So maybe a few will try other browsers. It doesn't matter to me whether they use NS7 or IE6, or Opera, etc., as long as the browser they're using supports the standards we use for our intranet (and both do).

The junk that Netscape 7 installs is just that, junk. The real value of Netscape 7.1 is that it is a standard version, so you don't have to go checking the build numbers (like you do with Mozilla) if you're trying to work out a bug. You pretty much know that everyone using Netscape is using one of a handful of versions.

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[Azghoul]

I'm curious. Why do you fail to use Mozilla then? It doesn't install anything without asking.

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[Jellybob]

The "Netscape Staff" and "Mozilla peeps" are often the same people... and you want to thank someone for an awesome browser, that would be Netscape your thanking, for open sourcing their product.

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[Jaysyn]

I'm using the Win32 version at work & home. Works great so far.

Jaysyn

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[swv3752]

A few secure sites require IE or Netscape. Nothing else will do (unless you change user agent strings).

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[Jon Abbott]

I noticed on the floor model, top-end Powermac G4 at a CompUSA yesterday, somebody had loaded up Netscape 4.7 in Classic Mode under OS X... I hope most people don't consider this the only way to get Netscape on OS X! Yikes...

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[jonadab]

> i would venture to say that the average user is even unaware
> of netscape these days

I would venture to say that the average user not only doesn't know
what Netscape is, he probably isn't sure precisely what Internet
Explorer is, or what the difference is between an Internet Service
Provider and a Web Browser. I know a lot of people who can't tell
the difference between an email address and a web address, even
when you explain it to them. ("So you can't use this one to send
email to a website because it doesn't have an a in a circle?")

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[shione]

if you dont like the aim/ad stuff
go to:

http://sillydog.org/narchive/sd/701.html

http://www.djgm-i.net/clubnetscape/djgmdistros.h tm l

http://www.holgermetzger.de/net7comp.html

Each site has their own cutomised version of netscape that has the stuff you don't want, taken out.

they only have 7.02 right now but give them some time and this new version will probably be there.

for more info see here:
http://www.holgermetzger.de/net7comp.html

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[reallocate]

When was the last time you saw an ad for Mozilla? Or a free Mozilla CD at the check-out line? Or anything else that smacks of publicity?

One of the weaknesses of open source -- from a business perspective -- is that it doesn't buy advertising, or buy its way into distribution deals. It depends on word of mouth. Unfortunately, when geek recommends something to non-geek, non-geek often says "Ok, I'll try that" but thinks "That guy can probably get it to work, but not me. Too many hassles. I'll stick with what I have."

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[PhoenixFlare]

I guess explaining that Mozilla is at least partially maintained by Netscape employees wouldn't go over well with you, eh?

Do you want to install our advertisement displaying system that ignores your user input, home page selection, and other settings?

AOL: I hate you.
I will never use your software, unless it happens to be the only broadband in the whole entire world.

Netscape Staff: You suck - if you even exist anymore - seems like 90% of your work is adding on crapware installers for AOL rather than doing good work - you should go work for doubleclick or other add F**ks.

Find something worthwhile to bitch and moan about, please....The rest of us fixed or ignored the insignificant effects of those problems years ago.

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[Reziac]

Also, if you don't like all the stuff included with Netscape, you can always get a streamlined version from sillydog.org

Re:I'll continue to use Mozilla

[smash_phase]

How strange... Did you actually ever USED Mozilla on Windows?

I did.. For our company, I had to test whether or not to upgrade Netscape 4.79 to Netscape 7.x or Mozilla 1.x.. or to IE6/Outlook. For months I used Mozilla in various configurations on various Windows-es and for various users, but in the end, I really have to agree on this:

Mozilla.org first stated that they did not ment to deliver a clean finished end-user product, but to develop new technology and were just happy if it compiled and ment to leave the rest to others and I think that still is true.

And for Netscape Messenger 7.x: opening spawned attachments on a busy connection to an IMAP server is still a bitch, it often crashes Netscape! Wheel mouse support is also not okay
(dead for Windows 95, troublesome for '98/W2K).
And we still can not paste screendumps (NS 4.x feature) or past contents out of Excell cells (NS4.x feature, works under Mozilla). And for running a helpdesk of a financial company, that's 'not nice'..
And what about Palm Hotsync support? There is a nice Netscape mailsync option in the Palm desktop, but does not work for NS 4.x nor 7.x. I finally had to install Outlook just to get it working, while the main mail client for the user still is Messenger!

I embrace the concept of Open Source and all,
but I think I'm gonna advise (with pain in the heart) on buying an Exchange server (ditching Iplanet as client server) and installing Outlook (virus risk, security issues and all considered..).

p.s. the latest version of NS I tested was 7.02

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm probably not the first to ask, but why? Why don't they just let Netscape die in peace and tell people to go use Mozilla? It doesn't add anything of value.

Re:Why?

[bathmatt]

That is where you are wrong. You are forgetting all the popup ads that come with netscape. You don't get those with mozilla. I now finish my web surfing and have to do work instead of spending my day closing all those windows.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because with netscape AOL can stuff all its stupid advertisements into it.

Of course since AOL is/was paying for pretty much all the development work I guess they can do that if they want...

Actually now that AOL pulled the plug on this I expect Mozilla dev to really slow to a crawl.

I mean how many people that weren't on AOL's payroll actually contributed regularly to Mozilla? Like 2! Woah ya that's gonna be some blazing development there...

I'm just gonna switch to Konq anyways.

Re:Why?

[Patik]

Why don't they just let Netscape die in peace and tell people to go use Mozilla?

Because of name recognition. A lot of people have heard of Netscape and know that it's a web browser, but hardly anyone has heard of Mozilla.

Then again, those same people probably remember Netscape as that crappy old browser that didn't display tables (and more) properly, and was eventually beaten by Internet Explorer.

Re:Why?

[XSforMe]

You are forgetting all the popup ads that come with netscape.
Since 7.0 Netscape offers a popup killer, which you can set depending on the domain you are visiting.

Re:Why?

[edwdig]

1) Executives might be willing to try Netscape, but not Mozilla, due to name recognition.

2) Mail client can check AOL accounts & Netscape webmail accounts

3) Integrated AIM. There's integrated ICQ too, but it's worthless as it uses the same UI as AIM (i.e. no single message mode).

4) Spellcheck (yes it's available as an addon to Mozilla)

5) Java and the most popular plugins are included. So it's easier for the average person to set up.

6) Probably not the case on this release due to simultaneous releases, but in the past, Netscape took stable Mozilla branches and did futher bugfixes before releasing, resulting in a better product.

I'd use Netscape over Mozilla if they'd just leave in the "Block Images from Server" option in Netscape.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't they just let Netscape die in peace and tell people to go use Mozilla?
The same reason you wouldn't want anybody telling you: "Why don't they just let Mozilla die in peace and tell people to go use IE?"

Re:Why?

[Surak]

Mail client can check AOL accounts & Netscape webmail accounts

This is also referred to as the 'Spam-O-Matic(tm)' feature.

Integrated AIM. There's integrated ICQ too, but it's worthless as it uses the same UI as AIM (i.e. no single message mode).

Aka 'Instant Spam-O-Matic{tm)' with patented 'Bloodninja' cybersex capability.

Spellcheck (yes it's available as an addon to Mozilla)

Known under it's code-name, the 'CmdrTacoWillNeverEverUseThis' feature'.

Java and the most popular plugins are included. So it's easier for the average person to set up.

Because the download size of Mozilla just isn't big enough!

Probably not the case on this release due to simultaneous releases, but in the past, Netscape took stable Mozilla branches and did futher bugfixes before releasing, resulting in a better product.

Yeah. Because Netscape 7 was SOOOO much more stable than Mozilla 1.x

I'd use Netscape over Mozilla if they'd just leave in the "Block Images from Server" option in Netscape

What edwig didn't tell you is that he works for America Online and has most of his stock portolio tied up in AOL/TW stocks. ;)

Re:Why?

[TheQuantumShift]

anyone know if access to other webmail (hotmail) accounts are possible? this would sway the crap out of me...

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post claims that AIM is full of spam (it isn't), is hateful towards people who use AOL Mail or Netscape Webmail, engages in a little ad hominem attack on the original poster (essentially calling him a shill), and makes a really awful joke about CmdrTaco's spelling.

I expect it to be moderated up to +5 any time now.

Re:Why?

[Arandir]

Why don't they just let Redhat die in peace and tell people to go use Mandrake? It doesn't have anything of value.

Answer: because you're not king of the world, and until you are there's no law saying they can't.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Mozilla doesn't have spyware reporting back to ar.atwola.com

Re:Why?

[ryanvanderzanden]

The 'Block Images from Server' option is still there, just hidden a bit.

If you type 'about:config' in the URL bar, and locate the line 'imageblocker:enabled', double-click and change the value to 'true' you'll find that you can indeed block images from servers. You had me scared there for a bit, I clearly remembered being able to in 7.01 ... thank the omnipotent being(s) for about:config. :)

-r-

Re:Netscape?

[Anonymous Coward]

A bunch of us use Mozilla and are interested to know that 1.4 should be out some time today.

Mozilla 1.4

[jasondlee]

Mozilla 1.4 is out too. jason

Re:Mozilla 1.4

[vistic]

yay! (...getting it)

Re:Mozilla 1.4

[DeadSea]

I just tried 1.4 and a recent fix that was in the nightly that I've been using for the last two weeks didn't make it in. The Mozilla developers finally fixed it so that the new mail notification can play sounds! Before, no matter what sound you specified, it would always beep the system beeper. Too bad the fix didn't make it into 1.4, I was looking forward to using an actual release for a while...

Re:Mozilla 1.4

[cos(0)]

BitTorrentized.

Re:Mozilla 1.4

[Ark42]

Really? I have had the Wee-woo! sound forever, not a default Ding! or Beep!
As far as I know it still works in 1.4 final which I just downloaded. ( I know it worked in RC3 ).

Re:Mozilla 1.4

[DeadSea]

I think it was only a Linux bug. I wouldn't know if it ever worked on Windows.

Wow !

[Vanieter]

Netscape could resist naming it Netscape 8 ? The apocalypse is near !

Re:Wow !

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean 8? Should have skipped right to 9.0!!

IRC client?

[rocco2nr]

Winamp 3's IRC client is better than Mozilla's

Re:IRC client?

[Surak]

WinAmp 3 has an IRC client? Is that what you call that? ;)

Re:IRC client?

[mobets]

Why does winamp have an IRC client?

Re:IRC client?

[Anonymous Coward]

its a joke, retard

But does it work on Red Hat 6.0?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

The recent mozilla and netscape browsers have been consistent in not working on a vanilla Red Hat 6.0 install, due to a Java runtime library install bug.

Did that get fixed in this release? Or are they still abandoning anyone who hasn't upgraded?

Re:But does it work on Red Hat 6.0?

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Hat 6.0? How could you have not upgraded already!

You know it is free.. you aren't tied into some Microsoft licensing scheme!

Re:But does it work on Red Hat 6.0?

[Anonymous Coward]

dude...upgrade for $DIETY's sake...it is free.

Re:But does it work on Red Hat 6.0?

[Arker]

If I were him I think I'd upgrade to Debian or Gentoo. ;)

It may be free to upgrade from RH6, but it can be quite messy.

Re:But does it work on Red Hat 6.0?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and it might not work in Windows 95 either, but I'm betting they don't care. RH 6 sucked when it was new, get a freakin' upgrade! Or better yet, get a new flavor.

Re:But does it work on Red Hat 6.0?

[scosol]

Mod parent down- (ridiculous)

Who cares?
Vanilla Redhat 6.0?

Oh that's right- the "exploitable out of the box" version.
Anyone using that has got larger problems than Java not installing...

Re:Netscape?

[myawn]

The 'advantage' of the Netscape version is that it hides some of Mozillas pop-up blocking features, because otherwise it would interfere with AOLs preferred method of annoying their users.

There may be other features that are hidden or disabled as well, but that's enough for me to go with the Mozilla flavor.

Re:Netscape?

[Ishin]

If you care about standards and alternatives to IE, then you should care about just about any good news for the opposition to M$. Of course, if you don't care about webpages being viewable through OSX, Unix, Linux, or anything but windowsXP and it's successors, then by all means, continue to care nothing about alternative browser choices.

Re:Netscape?

[Deusy]

Mozilla.org probably do since I imagine Netscape (or their parent AOL Time Warner) pays for several full time coders for the project.

Re:Netscape?

[Jack Comics]

Yes, I do care about Netscape. Not necessarily because I think Netscape is the raddest, most elite browser out there, but because without Netscape, there would be no Mozilla. Let's face it, Mozilla relies on Netscape, and as a result, AOL, for life support.

If AOL should decide that Netscape isn't worth developing anymore, and decides to pull the plug on the few full-time Netscape/Mozilla developers remaining, as well as the resources dedicated to Netscape/Mozilla (such as the web servers), Mozilla would be in some serious doo-doo.

To show my support and to show AOL that indeed at least someone is interested in Netscape, I have already pre-ordered a Netscape 7.1 CD with Guide book. I may not ever use it, but at least AOL and Netscape knows that someone out there appreciates their efforts and may continue developing the core for one of the finest browsers out there, Firebird.

eagerly awaited by whom?

[sulli]

AOL ad sales reps?

Re:eagerly awaited by whom?

[Surak]

them, and X10.com, too. :)

Good - competition (!)

[krray]

I've been personally hooked on OS.X since its beta days. Originally the only games in town were OmniWeb (preferred), IE (ack), and Netscape (good 2nd choice).

Back in my Windows days IE never really got my attention -- it was always Netscape (up to 4.79 was decent).

The releases of Netscape that followed (Windows or OS.X) were pretty much not installed/forgotten. On the Windows end it was Mozilla/Opera and on OS.X 99% Safari.

This Netscape will get installed and hit the distribution cycle. It is very fast on OS.X and worth taking a look at (!)

Re:Good - competition (!)

[tigersaw]

How about some justification of your patent rejection of IE? I know, it sucks having a browser that loads a page correctly more often than not, but at least you've got a cooler mascot, right? Sorry if you take this as flamebait, but insupported rejection of MS products is pointless.

Re:Good - competition (!)

[MachineShedFred]

ok, how's this for justification:

1. Announced end-of-line for Mac OS X (the original poster uses this OS)

2. Slow as molasses in comparison to ANY of the competing browsers

3. Piss-poor support for standardized Mac OS interfaces such as the proxy configuration

4. Window clutter -vs- tabbed browsing

5. God-awful font rendering (again, in comparison to competition)

6. Lack of support for such useful things as automatic proxy configuration (.PAC files) that the PC version supports

I'm sure others can think of a few too. Yeah, it sucks having a browser that loads a page correctly more often than not, but it sucks MORE to have to wait three times as long for it to render the exact same data in the exact same way.

All things being equal, you should hope that renewed competition will cause the next version of your MS product to quit riding the brake.

Re:Good - competition (!)

[AKnightCowboy]

This Netscape will get installed and hit the distribution cycle. It is very fast on OS.X and worth taking a look at (!)

If you haven't tried it already, take a look at Camino (formerly Chimera). I've used it under MacOS X for almost a year now and use it as my full time browser on my iBook. It's fast, has the gecko engine with a nice Aqua interface and beats the pants off of Mozilla in terms of speed in my opinion. It's also another reason why I don't know what all the fuss is over Safari. Feh.. more chrome. It's like Java just came out and people are abusing the chrome skins again at Apple these days. Why on Earth didn't they stick with the sweet Aqua interface on everything??

Re:Good - competition (!)

[tigersaw]

Oh, sorry, I thought you were talking about using a computer, not a mac. That would definitely slow things down a bit. Carry on.

Re:Good - competition (!)

[MachineShedFred]

Nice work, troll.

Maybe you should try reading the parent post, rather than regurgitating the latest FUD from Microsoft.

Great.

[Dark Lord Seth]

Netscape 7.1 features many improvements over 7.02 including even better CSS support, spam filters, find-as-you-type, automatic image resizing, more customization via about:config, Web development tools, Palm synchronization and more.

Just what I needed! Develop my website which doesn't exist or sync a palmtop which I don't have! Could someone hand me a dictionary and point out what the word "bloat" means?

Re:Great.

[trout_fish]

Well I don't need CSS support or spam filters, so maybe they should be removed too.

Re:Great.

[duffbeer703]

Bloat sucks. Who the hell needs SSL support or graphics anyway.

Re:Great.

[edwdig]

Web development and palm sync are optional features. The fact that they exist in no way effects your install if you choose not to install them.

Mail/News - optional
Address Book - optional
Web Development Tools - optional
IRC Client - optional
Java - optional
Plugins - optional
Palm Sync - optional
Any other stuff only in Netscape releases - optional

The only things that are required to be installed are the browser and Composer. Composer is required because text entry boxes in the browser use the same code Composer uses.

Re:Great.

[Anonymous Coward]

bloat (n.) the state of adding hundreds of useless features to an application in the hope of making it appear innovative. See also Mozilla, Emacs.

And while we're at it...
de-integrate (v.) to take an excessively large program (see "bloat") and make it appear innovative by packaging the pieces of bloat individually. See also Mozilla Firebird, Thunderbird.

Re:Great.

[tundog]

I too was prepared to call this code bloat, but really this is part of a larger trend - the application as an integration portal.

There classic route with browsers has been standard, standard, standard. This is great for service deployment. When browsers first hit the scene, companies jumped on it because it drastically cut their support and development costs. No longer a Mac version, a linux version, a sun version etc., just one 'web' version.

The problem though, is that browsers are limited in what they can do in a standard fashion. What browsers like Mozilla will allow you to do as a corporate application developer is to deploy applications built to perform on virtual machine of sorts (namely Mozilla).

You get the benefits of standardization with the advantages of a closer platform specific integration.

Companies will be slow to adopt this approach, but the 'portal' as a concept is rapidly approaching the limitis of what can be achieved with a standard web browser features.

My predicition: We'll see the platform war all over again, except the M$ contender will be Explorer and not Windows *.

Re:Netscape?

[reiggin]

I have the same curiousity. Wouldn't it be more cost-effective and sensible for AOL/Netscape to just distribute Firebird instead of putting so much into Netscape? Or why even bother on their end? I would love to see statistics on how many people download this in the next few weeks. Then compare that to Safari, Firebird, or even Opera.

The continuation of monopolistic OSS/FS practices

[Anonymous Coward]

Although I understand the reasoning behind the addition of an IRC client to a web-browsing suite, why this trend, which is noticably shared between FS/OSS software, more or less reminds MS policies? Regardless if I am an MS fan or not, you should always remember that settlements regarding the MS 'monopolistic practices' can backfire at any time. I have considered that seriously as the small guy that produces commercial closed-source software is likely to be affected by the OSS/FS monopolistic plans. Again, this is not to state quality of OSS/FS versus CS, the freedom or whatever they stabd for, but simply a fair treatment they should receive from justice at som point. Cheers.

Re:Netscape?

[WegianWarrior]

Not me anyway - happy Opera-user

*wipe brow*

[jmays]

I was sweating while I was attempting to download it before the article (on slashdot) went live ... just made it under the wire.

It just may make me switch back from IE

[alen]

I love the autocomplete feature in IE that has been there for years. Maybe I'll switch back again. Now only if Netscape had a full screen feature like IE does.

Re:It just may make me switch back from IE

[universalis]

Now only if Netscape had a full screen feature like IE does. It has (as has Mozilla - been there for ages). Just press F11 and you get the same deal as with IE.

Re:It just may make me switch back from IE

[Anonymous Coward]

It does - try F11

Re:It just may make me switch back from IE

[Planesdragon]

Press F11 in Mozilla 1.4, and you get a full screen, just like IEs.

Better, actually, as the address bar is still there. :)

Moz's (and NS's) form function is great. Different from IE's, but still great.

Re:It just may make me switch back from IE

[Politburo]

Assuming it works on your system. I have dual monitors and using F11 only gets me a ~50x25 rectangle in the top left corner of my primary monitor.

Re:It just may make me switch back from IE

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not realy full screen then is it? When you want to run the thing in kiosk mode, full screen means NOT seeing the address bar or anything else. So "better" is completely subjective in this case.

Re:It just may make me switch back from IE

[Trelane]

Kiosk mode and full-screen mode are two different things.

Full-screen mode is for full-screen operation.

Kiosk mode is full-screen plus lots of lockdown options. Search bugzilla for more information on the kiosk mode development. It's in development.

Re:It just may make me switch back from IE

[Majix]

View->Show/Hide->Navigation Toolbar, voila, no more address bar. Google also has tons of projects, tips&trick and howtos on tailoring Mozilla especially for a kiosk environment.

Re:It just may make me switch back from IE

[Bedouin X]

Hmmmm... works fine here. 2 1280x1024 Monitors under Win2K pro. Mozilla does have other issues with Dual Monitors though.

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1345 47

Re:It just may make me switch back from IE

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh? In the full screen ie window, right click the grippy to the left of the navbar, or the gray-space to the right of the navbar and toggle "Address Bar", now your Address Bar is visible.

Being a mozilla developer (in my case or user/advocate in your case) doesn't mean you should be ignorant of features in IE.

Re:To bad....

[g_arumilli]

This is the reason why Netscape lost out to IE on the Windows platform, not because Microsoft somehow unfairly leveraged its position as the developer of Windows...Netscape used to be the king of browsers, but their laziness/refusal to innovate eventually led them to fall behind Internet Explorer...By the time Communicator rolled around, Netscape was bloated and inefficient, while Internet Explorer loaded quickly (even on Macs, not just on Windows) and ran far more smoothly while incorporating support for more HTML standards...

Netscape can whine all it wants about how Microsoft competed with it unfairly, but the fact remains that Netscape is the only party responsible for its own doom...And now that its parent company AOL has signed an agreement with Microsoft, there's no way in hell that they're ever going to recover...At least some of their efforts will live on in Mozilla...

Better java support

[mao che minh]

Although I prefer Mozilla overall, I keep an install of Netscape around because of it's more efficient use of Java under Linux (for the rare occasions when I really need to access some Java program). I can get Java going decently in Mozilla, but I get tired of having to make fresh symlinks and other small changes each time I overhaul Mozilla.

Re:Better java support

[Anonymous Coward]

Create the symlink in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins instead of your home directory or whatever you're using now. Even if you install mozilla in your home directory it will pick up the plugin. Works fine when using RPMs too.

Re:Better java support

[Thorgal]

All you need to get Java plugin running is to make a symlink. Once. Since the symlink is in ~/.mozilla/plugins/, you won't have to make any "fresh" ones after you update Mozilla.

Also released recently

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Epiphany 0.73, the popular gnome browser. The fonts don't suck either thanks to gtk2/xft/vera/fontconfig. Screenshot

Re:Also released recently

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla also uses gtk2, antialiasing and vera.

Re:Also released recently

[C_nemo]

And the tab titles in the screenshot?

modev
Slashdot
Goatse (the "eh" title)

no wonder you post anonymously, whats more scary is that i noticed it ;(

middle-wheel click to scroll

[Herr_Nightingale]

Is there any way to enable IE-like wheel-button click-to-scroll behaviour?? Mozilla would be OK if I could simply click my wheel button and zoom down a page. I've searched for an extension but no joy so far.

Re:middle-wheel click to scroll

[JW Troll]

it's called Autoscroll. Find it here. Most Mozilla extensions have incomprehensible names that aren't suggestive of what they do ;)
Caveat: it might disable middle-click-on-link functionality. That would suck.

Re:middle-wheel click to scroll

[lizrd]

It's the 6th one down. Autoscroll works fine in Firebird, I assume that it'll work fine in the other Mozilla variants as well.

Re:middle-wheel click to scroll

[rheimbuch]

Mozilla Firebird has a nice Autoscroll Extension that adds the middle-click-to-scroll feature.

Re:middle-wheel click to scroll

[glitch_]

Does this not do what you want???

Re:middle-wheel click to scroll

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla doesn't, but Firebird (the browser-only version of Mozilla) does. It's called "Autoscroll 0.3.3" and it's on the page that you linked to. Try Firebird, it's smaller and faster than Mozilla.

Re:middle-wheel click to scroll

[Anonymous Coward]

does it cripple the middle-click link thing? where it opens up a new tab?

Re:middle-wheel click to scroll

[Anonymous Coward]

No

Re:middle-wheel click to scroll

[AKnightCowboy]

Mozilla would be OK if I could simply click my wheel button and zoom down a page.

I tend to just left click on the body of the page and pull the mouse down to scroll down the page. Sure you start selecting stuff, but who cares? :-)

Is it ready yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time I have installed Netscape beyond the old (ancient, now) 4.xx versions, I was disappointed with bugs and usability problems. Question: Is Netscape 7.1 finally ready for prime time?

Re:Is it ready yet?

[prandal]

No.

Netscape's QA department really need to get their act together.

Trying to install the full version on a Windows 98 box whose only access to the net is via a squid HTTP/HTTPS proxy.

Install got stuck at ... configuring radio@netscape... I waited, waited, and waited some more... In the end I figured Godot would have turned up earlier if I'd continued waiting.

So, I killed the installer and try again, without radio@netscape. Looked good, so I decided to try their nice little ICQ client. Except it is not. Could not connect, even though the config from a previous netscape 7 incarnation had the ICQ web proxy set appropriately. Edited the AIM client preferences to make sure, and it moaned at me cos I wasn't6 connected (bad bad bad user interface, Netscape people!). Save the changes (actually, none, cos they were all right to start with), and it whinged again (same reason). Still unable to connect to ICQ. The real ICQ proggie has no such problems. Sighs...

Phil

Re:Is it ready yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have an internet connection. What do you expect? You might want to try the Mozilla zip releases which don't have/need an active install phase, but really, people who see the internet through a small peephole shouldn't complain when their setup breaks internet software.

Re:Is it ready yet?

[prandal]

That is complete and utter bollocks. There are all sorts of reasons why the net might not be available when installing software. Installers can and should handle such situations gracefully. And you've ignored the fact that the ICQ client doesn't work even when configured to go via the proxy, you insensitive clod! ;-)

Phil

1.4 is already out, just not on the web pages yet

[SeanTobin]

The new version is based on Mozilla 1.4, which is due out later today

If you are a savy ftp digger, know a savy ftp digger, or can follow this link you can get it right now... before its slashdotted :)

Right press

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll stop using 4.x when you pry the keyboard out from under my cold, dead, fingers . . . or Netscape makes context menu on right mouse press down an option again.

Re:Netscape?

[Anonymous Coward]

Proprietary AOL/Netscape.net mail access. Netscape logos, spell checker (spell checker can be added on to mozilla)

"eagerly-awaited"

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh... I assume he was joking when he said "eagerly-awaited". I eagerly await getting stabbed in the face by an ex-con than installing Netscape.

Netscape is dead - long live Netscape!

[Anonymous Coward]

Netscape is dead - long live Netscape!

------------
Knoppix.ru - Linux in five minutes!

Can't a browser just be a browser

[pytheron]

Looking at the new set of features this release offers (palm synchronisation, IRC client), it strikes me as though the project is trying to cover as many areas as possible that come loosely under the umbrella of "information exchange". Good things for this release are improved CSS support, image resizing on the fly etc. - advancements that improve the surfing experience. I wish they'd concentrate more on this area insted of bolting on the kitchen sink too..

Re:Can't a browser just be a browser

[pryan]

Try this on for size: Mozilla Firebird.

Re:Can't a browser just be a browser

[mobets]

I don't use the palm software now because I now use Evolution in Linux. But when I was first trying to get away from Outlook, it was realy nice to be able to sync with my Mozilla address book. Otherwise, I would have had to maintain a second copy in Palm Desktop. The only thing missing now is a good callender.

Reason why Netscape failed

[AtariAmarok]

" This is the reason why Netscape lost out to IE on the Windows platform, not because Microsoft somehow unfairly leveraged its position as the developer of Windows..."

It is a combination of both factors. Netscape made their browser worse and worse, while M$ improved IE...which they bundled for free and promoted aggressively. The two factors combined nicely to turn Netscape into a footnote.

Re: load

[arth1]

A reload that doesn't reload everything is very useful if you don't want to spend time reloading all the graphics on a page too. On a page like the /. front page, the difference on a slow line can be 3 seconds versus 30 seconds.
It's also useful if a page is incomplete.

More of interest with the Netscape release is

a) What has changed from the previous version of Netscape, and
b) What has changed from the corresponding version of Mozilla that it's built on.

If it's just adding the same AOL add-ons (or should I say ad-ons?) to a newer version of Mozilla than before, I'd say move on, there's nothing to see here.

Regards,
--
*Art

It's all my fault

[HunterZ]

You can blame it on me for breaking down and deciding to update to Mozilla 1.4RC3 via my dialup just the other day... Of course they would release 1.4 so I have to download it again :/

Re:It's all my fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Should've tracked the conversations. 1.4 release was being discussed day before yesterday :)

Re:It's all my fault

[AsparagusChallenge]

Calm yourself, they're exactly the same.

Re:It's all my fault

[devnullify]

1.4 == 1.4RC3, it's just a name change. Keep RC3, it's the same build.

Re:It's all my fault

[Bilange]

...deciding to update to Mozilla 1.4RC3 via my dialup just the other day...Of course they would release 1.4 so I have to download it again :/

I know what you feel, it happened to me, too.

Re:It's all my fault

[drunk_as_in_beer]

correct me if I'm wrong, but I think 1.4 is the same as RC3. If a release candidate is acceptable for release, it becomes the release.

Re:It's all my fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Calm yourself and get a brain.

You mean kiosk mode

[Anonymous Coward]

...opera, believe it or not, supports this odd little feature as well.

Why are version numbers so uneven

[superpulpsicle]

Netscape 7.1 for windows, linux, mac

Netscape 4.x for solaris, sgi and many other oses. Why is the numbering so whacked?

Re:Why are version numbers so uneven

[Yort]

Why is the numbering so whacked?

Probably because they haven't bothered to release 7.x browsers for Solaris, SGI, etc. And rightly so, as they've really nothing to gain from that.

Most of those companies do release their own version, tho. I know SGI has Mozilla available from their freeware site.

Re:Why are version numbers so uneven

[arth1]

Because Microsoft released Internet Explorer 5 -- Netscape wanted to be "one better".
This numbers game is also why you now have Redhat and Mandrake 9 -- SuSE will surely follow suit, or jump to from 8.2 to 9 or 10 (even though SuSE 8.2 has more newer stuff than RedHat 9), knowing that customers are stupid enough to buy the highest number, even if the products are different.

There's also the jump from SunOS 2.6 to Solaris 7 -- presumably to catch up with IRIX 6.2 and NT 4 and NT 5 (which Microsoft promptly relabeled 2000 to be ahead in the numbers game).

Did I mention the jump from Java 1.1 to Java 2 (which is Java 1.2)? Or the weird BIND 4 to BIND 8 version jump?

Now I'm saving to buy myself Windows 2003. Proof by numbers, it's *got* to be 0.15% better than Windows 2000!

Regards,
--
*Art

Re:Why are version numbers so uneven

[Planesdragon]

Simple.

After 4, Netscape decided to release Communicator as open source. The project, NS 5.0, was worked on for a few months before it was decided to rebuild from scratch with the Mozilla project.

The first NS bundle from Mozilla was Nestcape 6 PR 1--which was bad. Later NS6 versions--6 PR2, 6.0, 6.1, and 6.2, were built on better versions of Mozilla. But they had a very bad image, due to the Preview Releases. Thus, NS 7 was released, which is just a latter version of Mozilla repackaged.

Re:Why are version numbers so uneven

[Arandir]

That's funny, I'm running Netscape 7.0 under Solaris 8 right now. No, it's not NS 7.1, because it just got released today. Duh!

Re:Why are version numbers so uneven

[LilMikey]

"Now I'm saving to buy myself Windows 2003. Proof by numbers, it's *got* to be 0.15% better than Windows 2000!"

Actually, That's about right...

Re:Why are version numbers so uneven

[delphi125]

The odd thing is that it used to be the opposite - Windows 3.11 and Linux 0.99b come to mind. Ten years ago, at a guess? I think it was Word catching up on WordPerfect versions that started the trend, but I beg to be corrected.

Re:Why are version numbers so uneven

[n__0]

Don't forget winamp 2 --> winamp 3 --> winamp 2 --> winamp 5

Re:Why are version numbers so uneven

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the official version is that Netscape 5 was the unreleased version based upon the Netscape 4 codebase that was replaced by the New Layout project - Gecko. Anyway, the sequence for Netscape was

• Netscape 2 (I don't think there ever was a released Netscape 1, was there? Netscape 1 was the commercialization of Mosaic)
• Netscape Gold (2)
• Netscape 3 (the classic version of Netscape that everyone used), and the Gold version thereof.
• Netscape 4. IE 2, 3, and 4 had come out in the interim, with IE 3 running a little faster than Netscape 3 because of the integration of the browser and the OS, and IE 4 providing support for CSS which Netscape 3 didn't provide. Maybe Netscape 4 came out before IE 4, but I doubt it. Anyway, the problem with Netscape 4 was the ugly UI, the half-hearted CSS support, and a few other things that made it a subpar release. Netscape was already rapidly losing ground to IE, as IE was free and Netscape 3 was paid software, but with Netscape 4 they decided to give away the browser and try to make their money in other ways.
• Netscape 5 was never released; in theory it is as I said, the version that was abandoned when Gecko was born; but of course Netscape could have called NS6 "Netscape 5." But IE was at 5 and ...
• Netscape 6, the first release from the Gecko code. It was a stinker for performance and stability; the scuttlebut was that AOL pushed it out the door before the Mozilla people thought it was ready (the fact that Mozilla didn't reach 1.0 until a couple of years after Netscape 6 came out says something...).
• Netscape 6.5, a stabler, better performing release.
• Netscape 7, released after Mozilla reached 1.0, much more stable and speedy.
• Now Netscape 7.1, based upon Mozilla's best work with the integrated browser/mail suite. Now we'll be seeing the division of the browser from the mail application, and next stage of Mozilla. Whether an integrated Netscape continues from here or not is I think an open question; my own suspicion (based upon the AOL/MS deal) is that Netscape 8 will be the last Netscape, and that Mozilla will eventually be supported more by the Linux vendors than by AOL.

Re:Why are version numbers so uneven

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

I don't think there ever was a released Netscape 1, was there? Netscape 1 was the commercialization of Mosaic

Yeah, there was. I remember using Netscape 1.1N for the longest time long ago on my old Mac LC III.

Re:Why are version numbers so uneven

[noldrin]

They jumped from 2.0 to 6.0 for word on windows. I think they claimed that they were combining word on Windows and DOS, so they got to use the higher DOS numbers for numbering.

Re:Why are version numbers so uneven

[noldrin]

I think they had a 1 series of browsers, it was the one with the thropping N. Netscape 2 introduced something much more like the current N animation. I liked Netscape 1 because it had horizontal scroll bars unlike the Netcom web browser I had been using. As for Netscape 4, they tried to make it this big software package and renamed it Communicator. They basically tossed all their name brand recognition out the window, which was sad because that was all they really had going for them. And the the other software, it's biggest effect was to make the zip file too awkward to download. I think they should have kept the model of giving away the best browser possible and then selling the larger software package in the store.

Re:Netscape?

[DrXym]

You should do. Netscape / AOL throws a lot of money into developing Mozilla.org. If no one uses the Netscape branded release, where is the incentive for AOL to continue to do this? The answer is there is very little incentive at all. Now this wouldn't be a mortal blow but it would be extremely serious and would see a lot of talented developers reassigned to other stuff.

Even if you personally are happier about using Mozilla, or even Firebird you should consider recommending the branded version to friends and family. After all, throw a bit of money back at AOL in terms of page hits, market share etc. and they'll be less inclined to pull the plug.

Re:Netscape?

[Delphiki]

"obviously there is no need to look beyond IE"?

Have you ever used a browser other than IE? Every other browser I've used in the last year has offered a better browsing experience than IE. Mozilla has tabbed browsing and more recently pop up blocking. Phoenix has had both for a while. Plus IE doesn't render especially fast, and lacks a number of other features contained in most Gecko browsers. There are some reasons to use IE of course, like for plugins that only work in IE.

There is obviously good reason to look beyond IE though.

Dude it already does that

[Anonymous Coward]

In Windows, anyway.

I use my scroll-wheel to scroll in Mozilla for at least 12 months.

nsnotify

[compwizrd]

if only they'd bring back the mail notification program that 4.x had.

That's the sole thing holding me back from switching people at the office over to 7.x

Re:nsnotify

[Anonymous Coward]

If you only try to activate it, you'd notice that it exists.
I looked for this feature 'till Netscape 7.0.2 and now I am very glad to have it for every day use.

Re:nsnotify

[skt]

Not going to happen in my lifetime I think.. I used to like the application too, and use it currently with about 200 NS4 users. However, the last time that I checked.. there were no plans to bring it back, ever. Netscape 4 is old enough now (and getting worse web-page support every day), that I wouldn't wait for that feature. People would rather have a good web browser than the nsnotify mail checking application.

Basically what I plan to do is just explain that netscape does the same thing, except instead of having the envelope in the system tray, netscape has to be running in the taskbar. People keep netscape open most of the time anyway, either in a browser window or their Messenger application. nsnotify had its own problems (like cancel closing the application, and very inefficient mailbox-checking code), the way mail is handled in NS7 is actually much better, but people just need to be retrained a little bit. I hoped also that the user interface would stay the same, but I would not call this a required feature by any means.

Re:nsnotify

[dpete4552]

I believe 7.1 does have new mail notifications.

Re:nsnotify

[skt]

No, he is referring to nsnotify.. not netscape new mail notification. Netscape 4 feature description here. I doubt that nsnotify is in NS7.1 even.

Re:nsnotify

[Anonymous Coward]

There are independent alternatives

Re:nsnotify

[Anonymous Coward]

I went through about 30 different mail checkers at one point, most either are so bloated they're useless, or they can't deal with the fact that mail is left on the server after being downloaded. most either just keep saying there's mail waiting even though it's been downloaded into netscape.

haven't found one that acts like the nsnotify yet.

Re:nsnotify

[compwizrd]

Checked, and there's still no mail notify like nsnotify, unless I'm missing something somewhere in the setup or the program directory.

Re:nsnotify

[Anonymous Coward]

Try saberquest mailspy.
http://www.saberquest.com/products/mails py/

because

[SweetAndSourJesus]

A full reload is pointless on most sites. Why bother reloading title.gif when you want to see if there are any new slashdot stories? It's a waste of bandwidth.

It sucks that the shift-reload trick is undocumented, but you could easily fix that.

This is my 700th post. Hooray for me!

Re:because

[Anonymous Coward]

There's one problem with normal reload: It only reloads the url which is in the location bar. If that is a (static) frameset and that frameset contains a modified frame, the frame won't be reloaded (just like images won't be reloaded). Reloading framesets is useless except in combination with the shift key.

Re:because

[sabshire]

Not entirely pointless.... gfx do change occassionally, and they could have the same filename, and not doing a full reload causes you to not see things correctly. Granted, it is not the norm, but reload intuitively would mean, reload, and not half-way reload.

Re:because

[reallocate]

Undocumented?

I must have read something you didn't.

Mozilla 1.4 released

[Anonymous Coward]

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/releases/mozill a1.4/

Re:mac problem

[Anonymous Coward]

You just don't understand how to measure things. See, by all reckonings, macs are actually *cheaper* than comparable PCs, as well as being faster. I think by 'faster', however, most mac people are basing in having to learn a completely different UI as well as accomplishing the task under Windows, while just timing the task itself under a Mac. But, no, really, Macs are faster *and* cheaper than PCs. You just need to adjust your attitude.

solaris version???

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know when the solaris version will be available?

asdf

[Anonymous Coward]

What is Netscape?

Re:Dude

[Herr_Nightingale]

dude you can scroll with the wheel, but you can't CLICK on the wheel and then move the mouse down or up to scroll nicely. That's totally different.

NB: Autoscroll is for Firebird.

Re: Should be +3 Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

> Back in my Windows days IE never really got my attention -- it was always Netscape (up to 4.79 was decent).

Hah! Anyone who says the 4.x version of Netscape were decent never tried to develop for them and still maintain compatibility with IE (yes, it might be Microsoft's fault, but IE became the defacto standard due to its heavy adoption). At least modern versions of Netscape renders pages and Javascript correctly now.

I worked at a University, and we COULDN'T WAIT to get rid of Netscape because people would bitch about some pages not working (mostly DHTML problems). Pretty much all those pages work in IE and Moz/NS6+.

Netscape 4.x was a pile of shit. I challenge you to install it and use it for awhile. You'll be begging for the advanced rendering features of Lynx in no time.

Code name: too appropriate!

[fm6]

The whole Mozilla/Netscape effort is, alas, a prime example of the Buffy Syndrome. As Anthony Cordesman summarizes:

...each series of crises only becomes predictable when it is over and is followed by a new and unfamiliar one.

While uncertainty is the dominating motif, the "Buffy paradigm" has the following additional characteristics:

• What expertise there is consists largely of bad or uncertain advice and old, flawed, and confusing technical data.
• The importance of any given threat changes constantly, past threat behavior does not predict future behavior, and methods of delivery keep changing.
• Arcane knowledge is always inadequate and fails to predict, detect, and properly characterize the threat.
• The more certain and deterministic an expert is at the start, the more wrong they turn out to be in practice.
• The scenarios are unpredictable and have very unclear motivation. Any effort to predict threat motivation and behavior in detail before the event does at least as much
• Risk taking is not rationale or subject to predictable constraints and the motivation behind escalation is erratic at best.
• It is never clear whether the threat is internal, from an individual, or from an outside organisation.
• The attackers have no firm or predictable alliances, cooperate in nearly random ways, and can suddenly change method of attack and willingness to take risks.
• All efforts at planning a coherent strategy collapse in the face of tactical necessity and the need to deal with unexpected facts on the ground.
• The balance between external defense, homeland defense, and response changes constantly.
• No success, not matter how important at the time, ever eliminates the risk of future problems.

Of course, Cordesman is talking about terrorism, not software. Still...

Re:Code name: too appropriate!

[Reziac]

Of course, Cordesman is talking about terrorism, not software.

There's a difference?!

The Fonts Are Ugly

[Anonymous Coward]

Compared to the xft-enabled Moz, Netscape fonts are ugly. Is there any way to use better-looking fonts?

Let me understand...

[tilleyrw]

Netscape is based on the Mozilla code base.
Mozilla CVS is advanced beyond anything that Netscape can offer.

Therefore, Mozilla R007z. QED.

Re:mac problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing with Macs is that the OS is now refined to the point that they are finally becoming good machines. OS9 is pretty decent, OSX is really good. Everything before that is just utter shit. Sorry to say it, but it is.

Judging by the specs of your machine, you aren't running OS9 or OSX so I'd say that's the problem.

Re:Netscape?

[resignator]

and who really cares what browser an AOL user is using? I bet if you asked them they wouldnt even be able to tell you what a browser was let alone the name of the one they are using.

Re:1.4 is already out, just not on the web pages y

[bathmatt]

before its slashdotted Well, that is a good way to keep it from being /.'ed Post the link on /.

Re:Netscape?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck is the point in tabbed browsing? That's something the window manager should be doing, not the application. You could replicate it anyway with gnomepanel or whatever.

Tabbed browsing.

[zonix]

middle-wheel click to scroll

I find that using middle-click (wheel) to open a new tab is much cooler. :-)

(must be enabled in your prefs first - also enables ctrl+click, ctrl+enter)

z

Re:Tabbed browsing.

[Anonymous Coward]

you can do both if you have the NetCaptor wrapper for IE. That's more useful than having to choose between two necessary features. Oh, and Autoscroll in Phoenix (Firebird) allows the same functionality, but you can't do it in Mozilla yet.

Re:Netscape?

[el-spectre]

Those of us who have to build cross-browser websites care, actually....

Re:Netscape?

[uslinux.net]

Netscape has SNS support for AOL/Netscape/Compuserve users. SNS passes the AOL login to sites which need to authenticate - sort of a "single sign-on for the web". Very cool if you're an AOL user.

Mozilla adds popup blocking support.

I haven't tried the new Mozilla or Netscape yet, but in using Mozilla 1.4a vs. Netscape 7.0 on Solaris 8 Mozilla wins hands down. Netscape will take several seconds to regain any control quite often, and the integrated AIM client just hangs for 10 seconds or so before (slowly) responding. Those sort of things may be fixed in Netscape 7.1, but I haven't tried it yet...

Re:Netscape?

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

If AOL should decide that Netscape isn't worth developing anymore, and decides to pull the plug on the few full-time Netscape/Mozilla developers remaining, as well as the resources dedicated to Netscape/Mozilla (such as the web servers), Mozilla would be in some serious doo-doo.

That point is about as accurate (IMHO) as saying that without Unixware their would be no Linux. Netscape may have played a big part in Mozilla but if it was reliant on it at this point their would be no fork (or is there no spoon)

Re:CSS

[sulli]

I for one like having my browser decrypt Content Scramble System encoded DVDs.

Re:Netscape?

[stuuf]

Netscape is used by people who like the stansards compliance of Mozilla and alternative to IE/Outlook, but don't want a potentially unstable version that you have to update every 3 weeks. My family consists of 2 mozilla users, 2 NS 7 users, and 1 IE user. Netscape is good for people who don't like M$|E but aren't hackerly enough for mozilla.

Re:CSS

[grasscutter]

Now if a roaming profiles was added to Netscape/Mozilla, I could completely switch.

Re:CSS

[archen]

Well I don't think N4 really matters. Seriously if you use N4 I'm sure you must be used to the entire internet looking completely fucked up. I can't say how happy I am to finally have a browser that you can build web pages from scratch based on standards, fire up a browser and actually have it look like you intended (well aside from the file download box which gets totally messed up when you try to control it with CSS in Mozilla).

IE still has a ways to go with CSS. And unfortunatly now that MS has dominance in the browser market, I don't think they really care either.

I imagine you've been abandoned...

[Kjella]

Sorry do say, but I think they think that most people belong in one of two categories. Either "don't break it if it works" - in which case you'd stick with the old version of Mozilla - or "I want to have a recent version", in which case you'd have upgraded already (after all RH7,8,9... it's a while ago since RH6). I guess your niche is a bit too small...

Kjella

Stupidity, Reality

[fm6]

In the case of Solaris, it's corporate stupidity. Sun tells us that Solaris users don't need Microsoft software, but won't subsidize maintenance of Solaris Netscape. And given the number of Solaris desktops, it's hardly suprising that AOL won't do it for free.

In the case of IRIX, SGI is just facing reality: they've never made a dent in the desktop market, and it's not worth spending money to make their workstations do things people can do more cheaply with Wintel systems. When I worked there, they didn't even have up-to-date Quicktime codecs!

Re:Netscape?

[Delphiki]

You can't really replicate it with gnome panel, as all that can do as group buttons for multiple similar windows in the panel. It does nothing to save desktop space, unless you minimize whatever windows you aren't looking at. Having tabs that you can switch between is much more convenient in my opinion. The functionality of these two things is really only vaguely similar. A lot of text editors and IDE's support multiple tabs, and apps like Photoshop use MDI child windows to allow multiple documents in one window, so why not browsers too?

...and that's the reason.

[mblase]

To the average user netscape and IE are the only two browsers in existence.

...And that's exactly why this is a good thing. If your Joe Surfer coworker or family member is complaining about, say, popup ads in IE, and you tell them about Mozilla, you have to explain what it is and why it's good and where they can get it, and then they'll forget the URL two minutes later anyway. Where if you tell them Netscape.com has the latest version of their browser and a built-in AIM client, they'll actually perk up and listen. You can educate them about the value of Mozilla later on when they're a little more savvy.

Re:...and that's the reason.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha - except they remove pop up blocking from Mozilla when they release it as Netscape.

Re:...and that's the reason.

[I_M_Noman]

they remove pop up blocking from Mozilla when they release it as Netscape

They didn't in NS7.01 -- did they do that in 7.1? If they did, I certainly won't be downloading it.

Re:...and that's the reason.

[I_M_Noman]

Whoops -- meant to say "they did it in 7.02". Mea culpa.

Re:...and that's the reason.

[timmyf2371]

One of the sales guys at my workplace is a computer novice and was complaining about the popup culture these days.

I e-mailed him a direct link to the latest Mozilla exe file to allow him to block popups.

IMO Popups blocked and tabbed browsing are two major advantages of Mozilla over IE.

System requirements list win98...

[Chuck Bucket]

System Requirements (Note: Netscape 7.1 is recommended for users with 64MB of RAM on Windows 98 or higher. See full system requirements for more information.)

link

prob bad qa on their part, but that line is not correct.

CB

Re:Netscape?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tabbed browsing...whoopee...Tried Mozilla. Didn't see anything especially interesting.

Why download Netscape, full of AOL crap? Even worse, why buy it? A guide book? For a web browser? C'mon...gimme break.

I used to love Netscape, until it became bloated with adware and useless AOL junk.

On my Windows machine, it's IE. I can't take it off anyway, so why add more crap on top of it?

On Linux, it's Galeon and Ximian for email/PIM.

Re:Netscape?

[danrees]

What the fuck is the point in tabbed browsing? That's something the window manager should be doing, not the application. You could replicate it anyway with gnomepanel or whatever.

You assume that everybody has a window manager that is efficient at doing so. Tabbed browsing seems a bit redundant/overkill on Mac OS X, for example, since one can switch between windows within one application by using cmd-` rather than cmd-tab. Windows can't do that, so tabbed browsing allows much easier access to browser windows.

Re: load

[holt]

That isn't true... in rural areas DSL/Cable services are $50 a month (if available at all), and dial up is $25. A lot of people can't afford to double their costs like that. And this is in the US. What about people accessing the internet from places like Kenya, where you just can't get high-speed access? Just because you have DSL and don't have a need for that feature, doesn't mean everyone has the same needs and wants.

Re:Netscape?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're obviously an idiot. I guess you have no idea what an MDI is? It's something that takes away the need for multiple windows. There is no reason that you should have to have multiple windows when looking at multiple web sites. Having them all in one window with an MDI makes total sense and is far more efficient in terms of workflow AND system resources. Gnomepanel cannot replicate this feature in the least. I love Gnome, but it doesn't do anything like that. You are a total buffoon. now go pull your fist out of your ass, wash up and be a normal human being instead of an asshole troll.

Re:Netscape?

[Joel Bruick]

Firebird and its brothers Thunderbird, Waterbird, and Monkeybird (OK, I made up those last two) will eventually be the components that make up the Mozilla suite (check the Mozilla roadmap) and thus, unless AOL decides to pull the plug, will be the next version of Netscape as well. So yes, eventually this will happen.

Firebird is great, but it still has quite a few crashers and trivial bugs that need to be ironed out before it's thrown out to the non-geek masses. It is only at version 0.6, after all.

Re: load

[Zeal17]

Ummm... There are a lot of people who don't live in an area that has broadband service. It's changing, quickly, but it's not 100% yet, so don't assume someone who uses dialup is just doing it to save money.

And then there are the people who get free dialup through their school or work.

-Zeal17

Re: load

[Craig Maloney]

My 28.8k connection at home would like to beg to differ with you. DSL? No copper. Cable? Ha ha.

Yes, Virginia, people on dialup DO exist.

Re:Netscape?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Yes, because they (hopefully) will be feeding AOL with a new browser to wean users away from IE.

No they won't.

AOL, like the DoJ before them, hadn't the guts to stand up to Microsoft. They caved in during the recent antitrust suit and agreed to use IE for the next seven years!

same stupid problems

[BigBir3d]

www.cnn.com

Using Netscape 7.1 for Windows (I am at work, ok?) I still can't vote in a poll properly (pop-up appears, but the vote data is loaded in main window, leaving pop-up blank).

Unrequested pop-ups are not being blocked.

I guess this is going into the "Recycle Bin" in the next minute or two...

Re:same stupid problems

[Anonymous Coward]

But... the pop-up appears because you voted and requested it.

Re:same stupid problems

[Anonymous Coward]

It worked just fine on my Mozilla 1.2.1 on RedHat 9.

Re:same stupid problems

[pmz]

www.cnn.com

Using Netscape 7.1 for Windows (I am at work, ok?) I still can't vote in a poll properly (pop-up appears, but the vote data is loaded in main window, leaving pop-up blank).

I think Netscape 7.1's Good Taste algorithms are working just fine. Good CSS support and preventing people from voting in Wolf's damned sensationalistic and myopic polls is win-win :)

Re:same stupid problems

[hackstraw]

This is especially sad considering that cnn.com is probably one of AOL/Time/Warner's most popular websites. Seems like someone might have tested it.

I'm very content with Galeon/Mozilla. I think the only feature that Galeon/Mozilla does not have is a save to text option like Netscape had.

Re:same stupid problems

[BigBir3d]

Nope.

I have been using Mozilla since the .94 days (ish). I am used to the interface.

Re:same stupid problems

[Anonymous Coward]

The poll works correctly for me on Mozilla on Windows and Linux. There must be something specific to your setup since it seems really weird that a company's web page would not render correctly on their own web browser!

Re:same stupid problems

[kalidasa]

Works fine in MozillaFirebird. So either this is a distinction between one 1.4-sibling and another, or ...

Re:same stupid problems

[Arker]

Using Mozilla on Mac and Win both it works fine for me. Don't know what you're doing but check your settings.

Re:same stupid problems

[bryanp]

Was it working under 7.02? That's what I run on my work machine and my home machine (Win2KPro works quite nicely as a desktop OS, thanks) and I have no problems with popup blocking. The only time I ever see popups is on those rare occasions I need to fire up IE.

Re:same stupid problems

[BigBir3d]

Please read my post.

NETSCAPE 7.1

This is a Netscape thread, not a Mozilla thread. There is a difference.

Re:same stupid problems

[BigBir3d]

I haven't used 7.02 or any other Netscape since 6.x series. Usually I just stick with IE (bank stuff) or Mozilla when I am on the Windows machine at work. At home (linux), I have not used anything besides Mozilla for 2 years or so. Konqueror once in a blue moon, mainly to compare weird things from Safari (ex g/f iBook) to Konq.

Way back in the day, I used only Netscape. Occasionally I get nostalgic and try it again. Lately (4.x 6.x and now 7.1) I have been very under-whelmed :(

Time marches on I suppose.

Re:same stupid problems

[jrsmith]

Works fine for me as well. I'm using Mozilla Firebird 0.6 nightly build 20030630.

Re:same stupid problems

[weston]

Using Netscape 7.1 for Windows (I am at work, ok?) I still can't vote in a poll properly (pop-up appears, but the vote data is loaded in main window, leaving pop-up blank).

I agree that this is unreasonable, and furthermore, I don't understand why this is so hard to get right. I'm sure that 95% of all annoying popups come _only_ from abuse of the "onload" event handler applied to the body tag. Block all popups steming from that method applied on the body tag, put a pane in the preferences for exceptions, and you're set.

Re:same stupid problems

[Arker]

Hello, Netscape 7.1 is Moz with some AOL specific hacks, like removing the popup blocking and adding their login protocol. Very unlikely that any of those changes would cause that problem, particularly when there are other posters not experiencing it with Netscape 7.1 either.

Re:same stupid problems

[Anonymous Coward]

An inconsistent computing experience while using Windows 98???

NEVAR!!! :rollseyes:

(pop-up blocking not removed... just not working right for parent poster)

Not so bloaty as before

[mblase]

...for one thing, you can choose to install it without the mail/news or IRC chat client at all, cutting down on the size. Don't use the email, you don't need the Palm sync -- but those who do might appreciate it.

If you get the browser, then you still get Composer with it at minimum. If you want a browser only, then feel free to contribute to the development of Mozilla Firebird, which is even more streamlined than the browser-only install.

Chill out, the Moz developers know that bloat is a common complaint, and they're doing what they can about it. But one thing at a time, since every feature you don't want is one some other user can't live without.

Grammar police

[Anonymous Coward]

"Mozilla.org probably do since I imagine..."

It's 'Mozilla.org probably does', you ignoramus.

Re:Grammar police

[Anonymous Coward]

He might be British, who think that corps are plural.

Re:Grammar police

[Deusy]

Mozilla.org is an organisation. Here in Britain, where English was created, polished, and perfected (Liverpool aside), we often refer to organisations and companies as plural. They are afterall a collection of people.

It's OK.

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knows about your Down syndom and all. You can go ahead and act like the Tard that you are.

Like a Porsche with curb feelers

[SweetAndSourJesus]

Anyone who would want the AOL integration is most likely happy with AOL.

It's baffling.

Re:Netscape?

[grub]

Very cool if you're an AOL user.

Well.. their standards aren't very high. :)

Re:1.4 is already out, just not on the web pages y

[mobets]

hehe I got it just a few minutes ago and was maxing out my dsl connection. Maybe they have betters servers or a bigger pipe this time around.

Re:Netscape?

[CompWerks]

But because without Netscape, there would be no Mozilla. Let's face it, Mozilla relies on Netscape

I think you have this backwards - Netscape was derived from Mozilla not the other way around.

As an ex-Netscape hater...

[AndyMoney]

... I have to say that Netscape/Mozilla has not only shocked me with improvements in reliability and speed, but has in fact pulled me away from IE/Outlook Express which I swore were the greatest Web/EMail tools. I remember back in the days of Netscape 4.X. The darn thing would take forever to load, suck up my computer's resources, and consistantly crash on specific web pages. Being a web-developer made it worse... It was such a pain having to remove nifty DHTML effects from my company's website (or incorperate code to modify HTML output for Netscape) because some people out there were still using it. I think I'm going too in depth on my point here... Compared to what Nescape USED to be, the current Mozilla/Netscape software is incredible. And this is coming from a WINDOWS user. ;) The best thing Nescape ever did was make their browser open srouce (in my opinion). And... The free Bayesian spam filter in the Mozilla mail client has amazed me. I NEVER thought that free technology existed that provided such reliable and accurate spam filtering. I am down from 14 spam messages per day to maybe 1 at most per day. I've only had 2 false positives since I started using it 3 weeks ago. Alright. I'll stop rambling on this matter. I've just been waiting a while now to outlet my good experiences with Mozilla, especially after hating it so much in the past. *Two thumbs up*

Re:As an ex-Netscape hater...

[RobertNotBob]

I am down from 14 spam messages per day

14 a day? Jeez! I got 14 spams in the time it took to read your post! (OK, OK, actually I only got 8, but still, only 14 a day would be GREAT) But thanks for the info. I have not used Netscape for e-mail since version 2. I'll give the new Bayesian system a try.

Re:As an ex-Netscape hater...

[swv3752]

The info regarding configuring it is nonexistant in Mozilla so it might be non obvious in NS as well.

As spam comes in, mark with the junk filter button. If something comes through ans is erroneously marked as junk, just click the junk filter button to unmark it.

Look in your preferences for configuring the junk mail. You might want to create a new folder for all junk mail to be directed to so that you double check the filtering before it gets deleted.

Mod the parent down

[BlueEar]

The article has nothing to do with Netscape, Mozilla or HTML standards. It is about some guy who had sex with a goat. Please do not mod something as informative just because it looks like it. Follow the link, damn it(!) and find out this is really a troll!

Re: load

[Stonent1]

Note that if you are running a nat with squid, you may have caching enabled. I found out that my squid config was caching and causing heck trying to participate in online forums, I couldn't see my own posts because they were caching. Also some ISP's by default pipe port 80 through a proxy.

Re:mac problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, like in bizarro land or something? Does every mac come with a built in mind altering ray or something?

Re:Netscape?

[chia_monkey]

Netscape is still very relevant. Sure, IE has the market and most developers code just for that (it's bad practice, but we all know it happens). Sure, it's not as small or fast as other, lesser-known browsers (that geeks or other brave souls keep and eye on and use). It's traditionally been big and slow. BUT...it's an important part of browser history. It started the movement. But more importantly, it follows most of the standards that are set. It forces you to write good HTML code whereas IE lets you slide. Do we really want IE to be the only big player left? No. I admit I hardly USE Netscape (I use Safari for everything, IE when I have to, and test using Netscape) as a browser, but it still has a spot firmly planted on my dock.

Mozilla Handles it Cacheing just fine

[blackp]

This is the basics of a 'soft reload'
- Checks each downloaded file (image, html, etc) fors its modified timestamp.
- If the cache is the same as the one on the server, there is no time spent downloading since these files are still the same. (unless the web developers don't know their trade and are placing modified dates in.)

*** The 'soft reload' is an important ability and should stay. I do not want to reload all the images of slashdot every time I want to see new stories, and slashdot does not want the extra load of all of us non-subscribers hitting reload waiting for a story to appear. The 'soft reload' not working is a Web Developer and Administrator problem, not a Netscape problem. If you have this problem a lot, go to more professional web sites.

Mozilla 1.4 binaries are up...

[iceT]

Get 'em before the rush:

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/releases/mozil la 1.4/

Re:Mozilla 1.4 binaries are up...

[cos(0)]

BitTorrentized.

Why keep developing Netscape?

[Anonymous Coward]

Afterall, you can't polish a turd...

" eagerly-awaited"?

[Call Me Black Cloud]

the eagerly-awaited Netscape 7.1

Before I accept such an outrageous statement I'll need proof. Thank you.

Um... so use Trillian?

[Anonymous Coward]

Trillian has all of the features of AIM... without the ads. Plus, it has a plethora of nice skins. (Personally, I like the default Trillian Pro skin with the MSN icons.)

Too true.

[Ride-My-Rocket]

Netscape 4 is awful, and marks the point at which I refused to develop for it any more. Minor-release versions of Netscape introduced a slew of compatibility issues, requiring not only compatibility between different browsers (IE4.x, NN 4.x), but also within minor versions of Netscape (4.xx, 4.yy).

I still refuse to support Netscape -- it's a dead browser, built upon a far more promising OSS engine (Mozilla) and bundled with a bunch of applications I don't need / want. I like Opera 7.xx a lot, simply because it offers high degrees of compatibility with IE and is available free. However, I don't think it'll ever truly catch on because it's adware, and requires users to shell out $40 to reclaim the space wasted by the ad.

Netscape is dead. Bust out the shovel, bury it and move on.

Re: Should be +3 Funny

[Daniel_Staal]

True, the 4.x versions of Netscape are trash, but...

At the time they were quite good. There were a lot of browser problems all around, and Netscape 4 was/is better than most of its competitors.

If you are comparing it to a *current* version of IE Moz, or anything else, it looses. Fine. Good in fact: it means there has been progress. But it was decent when it came out. (Not really good, but decent.)

Well...

[Kjella]

1) Executives might be willing to try Netscape, but not Mozilla, due to name recognition.

If they have listened to their users, it'll have name recognition... "That bloated, buggy crashing POS browser", not to mention what they'd hear from web devs. I remember sitting there writing a website for Netscape 4 and wishing I could use IE instead - in IE everything worked perfect, but Netscape decided to fuck up everything. The layout that is, in between crashing itself. And no, I wasn't making it in Frontpage either, even handcoding it came out wrong on Nutscrape 4. I almost believed the world would go IE-only by the time Opera and Mozilla came to save the day (and the standards).

Kjella

how about

[Ender Ryan]

You do realize you do not need to install all those things, don't you?

Sort of related..

[Superwraith]

I have been checking out Dillo. It is still quite young, but the speed is amazing and the browser is remarkably stable. It is so nice being able to load cpans full list of perl modules in a mere fraction of the time it takes firebird or mozilla, or hell even konqueror. Oh and when you click the back button, the cache is so much faster.. On a cached copy of cpan's module list I am able to load it in 1 second compared to mozilla's or firebird's 15 to 20 seconds it takes to fully load. This browser is well worth checking out, and I hope more developers get involved. Personally I can see where this browser could actually replace mozilla as it gets more mature.

CSS Support?

[jwilcox154]

Netscape 7.1 features many improvements over 7.02 including even better CSS support

You Mean that I can watch my DVDs in Netscape 7.1? Better not let the MPAA know about it. ;)

Re:CSS Support?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can if you use IE.

If you have gestures installed on Mozilla...

[vistic]

...it's easy. Just gesture Up, Down, Up... and voila! full reload.

I don't think IE is much better... as i recall, I would go up to the address bar and hit enter if I wanted to do a full reload. Just hitting reload did the same thing as it does in mozilla.

Re:If you have gestures installed on Mozilla...

[Ark42]

In IE, you have to press control+refresh to get the same effect as shift+reload in netscape4-7/mozilla.

Not only the icons...

[NetDanzr]

Last time I installed Netscape (4.71), it hijacked my file extensions in a way that even MSIE was unable to do. Until this day I'm finding files that search for netscape.exe when I try to open them. Since then, I rather pay for Opera than get a free version of Netscape.

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? If I understand you properly, you're looking for a right-click menu. Every browser in existence has one of those, including Mozilla. What specifically are you asking for?

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's complaining about the way the context menu is invoked on the Windows platform: You have to press the mouse button and release it to get the menu. Netscape 4 pops up the menu on mouse down. This makes selecting menu items quicker: press the right mouse button, move the mouse to the desired menu item, release the mouse button. Mozilla (and practically all other Windows applications) require you to press the right mouse button, release the right mouse button, move the mouse to the desired menu item, press a mouse button, release the mouse button. There are a number of bugs about this behaviour, here's one of them: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=49844 (no link because bugzilla doesn't serve requests with Slashdot referrers).

Re:Huh?

[devnullify]

Hmm. I thought Mozilla/Firebird's UI was independent of the OS API. And it seems the behaviour he wants works fine on Firebird 0.6 on my FreeBSD system. Odd.

and still no SVG

[sciuro]

... and SVG still isn't in it. That itch is getting worse...

-dunc

Re:and still no SVG

[drunk_as_in_beer]

I haven't seen any activity in any of the projects working on SVG. Really quite a shame. It's something that actually requires a good deal of expertise, so its unlikely we will see anything happen in the near future.

Who uses Netscape?

[Merk]

It's so strange. I look at the writeup for the new Netscape release, and when the poster talks about the new features, the links they provide are links to mozilla.org pages. I look at the Netscape main page and I can't even tell that they make a browser. The "Downloads" link is tucked away in the upper-left corner. Even today, when they're releasing a new version, there's no hint of it even on their main page!! Instead the big deal is "10 things everyone should do before turning 30". Whaa?? Then, there's the awful pain of trying to install the Netscape version. The last time I installed a version of the Netscape-branded Mozilla, I had AOL crap littering my system everywhere.

On the other hand, when I go to the Mozilla site everything is clear. It's obvious where to download the version of Mozilla I want for the platform I want. It's also normally 2 or 3 versions ahead of the Netscape-branded release, and the install process is clean and painless.

Given all that, who are the poor sods downloading and installing Netscape?? I guess they have enough knowledge of computers to be able to install an alternative to IE, but not enough to be able to know about Mozilla? Can there really be more than a handfull of these people, and can't they be rescued and re-educated?

Re:Who uses Netscape?

[modicr]

How to download netscape?

go to /www.google.com/
type "netscape download"
click on [I'm Feeling Lucky]

Roman

Re:Who uses Netscape?

[reallocate]

Say "Netscape" to most Internet users and I suspect they'll think "browser".

Say "Mozilla" to the same folks and I suspect they'll think "Japanese monster movie??"

You've made an interesting critique of the Netscape home page. However, since Netscape isn't gonna make any money from free downloads, why should they bother to hype it that much?

Re:Who uses Netscape?

[dublin]

Given all that, who are the poor sods downloading and installing Netscape?? I guess they have enough knowledge of computers to be able to install an alternative to IE, but not enough to be able to know about Mozilla? Can there really be more than a handfull of these people, and can't they be rescued and re-educated?

Actually, many of us that prefere Netscape to Mozilla are *well* aware of the differences, and value and appriciate those differences. We are most certainly NOT in need of either "rescue" or "reeducation". We run the stable version!

As I've mentioned before, just having bookmarks available in the Netscape sidebar is enough reason to choose it. It's easy to strip out AIM and the like - takes under a minute, and I bet even most 133t hax0rs here on /. could handle it.

Further, Netscape is considerably more stable than Mozilla (especially on Windows, which is the preferred desktop even for most people here (ask Taco for his logs...)) Mozilla is (and is intended as) a development platform - it's good at that. From what I've seen, the Mozilla releases recieve far less testing and bug-fixing than Netscape performs in their "equivalents". This testing is the reason Netscape releases typically lag their Mozilla counterparts by a fair margin - we got lucky this time and Mozilla 1.4 and Netscape 7.1 are out almost simultaneously only because the Mozilla folks declared RC3 to be v1.4.

In addition there are other good resons to prefer Netscape: The Developer Pack alone is a great reason. If you're doing web page development and taking advantage of JavaScript the way you should, you *need* Venkman and the rest - these are serioous power tools.

If you are using the DOM (and if not, you darn sure should be) you'll find the DOM inspector handy, too.

For those that think JavaScript is a toy language and not suitable for anything real, have a look again - a lot has changed in the past few years, and pure JavaScript is now even the best alternative to SVG, since that is a great idea, but not supported in any mainstream browser, unlike Javascript. Like it or not, JavaScript is the lingua franca of the web, and Netscape does it best.

Finally, even those that like Mozilla should support Netscape by recommending it to less tech-savvy friends. NOt only is it more stable than Mozilla, but doing so supports Netscape, the company whose money is behind over 90% of the commited changes to the Mozilla code base. I view using Netscape as something akin to buying boxed copies of Red Hat or Mandrake - I don't have to, but it's an important show of support. I'm continually amazed at the number of people here on /. willing to spew vitriol at AOl, but claim to love Mozilla. The simple fact is that Mozilla would have died several years ago without Netscape's very substantial commitment of time, money, and most importantly, programmer resources. I thank Netscape for paying those programmers good salaries, rather than making them wait tables for tips as in Richard Stallman's infamous quote: "Programmers should work as waiters so they can give their code away". I for one hope to never have to run code that is developed by an oppressed waiter who ought to have a real job writing code.

Althogether, there are plenty of good reasons to prefer Netscape to Mozilla, and I for one, am not eager to have unstable Mozilla software destroy valuable personal data like e-mails and bookmarks files, somethign that has happened to me several times with various Mozilla releases, but never with any Netscape release. If you want to live on the bleeding edge, fine, but it's irresponsible to encourage others to do likewise, and rude and insulting to assume anyone that prefers a stable browsing environment lacks common sense.

How can Mozilla 1.4 be due today?

[Anonymous Coward]

There were three "release candidates", which is ridiculous. A beta test by any other name is still a beta test.

I tried all of those RCs and had serious window redraw problems in Windows. Works fine in Linux though.

Finally, I had to fall back to 1.3.1 in Windows. I hope they fixed the problems...

Gestures

[EvanED]

Not to mention gestures with the Optimoz plug-in. I got Mozilla to try this, and I swear it is by far and away the biggest reason I still use Mozilla. It becomes like a mouse wheel. You know if you have one on your mouse and you go use a computer that doesn't you still instinctively try to use it anyway? Same deal with gestures. I open IE for one of the sites that won't work in Mozilla and try to navigate back by dragging left.

I don't think it should catch on yet

[sstory]

Though I use it, I wouldn't reccommend others use Mozilla yet. Why? Because the mechanism for saving your old mail is not yet developed. You have to physically find the file which contains your old mail and transplant it. This is an important capability which is missing.

Re:I don't think it should catch on yet

[i.r.id10t]

Wrong. If you have netscape 4.x installed, Mozilla will copy and then upgrade your profile(s). If you have Netscape 6 or 7 installed, they use the same profile info.

Re:I don't think it should catch on yet

[jonadab]

Yes, but when (not if) Mozilla's list of profiles gets lost, it is
quite useful to know how to recover your stuff from your profile dir.
(This is not hard, but you do have to understand about heirarchical
filesystems and know which directory to look in, which varies from
platform to platform.)

As an admin, I deploy Mozilla/Netscape because fixing the profile
directory a couple of times a year is easier for me than cleaning
out adware every month. We had MSIE on one PC for a while and it
soaked up more of my time than all the ones with Mozilla (five or
six of them) combined. Plus, Moz/NS allows to accept cookies but
limit their max lifetime to the current session, which is rather
important when you have a different person every hour using the
computer. (This is a public library scenerio.)

The browser in Mozilla/Netscape is rock solid, featureful, and
well decorated. I recommend it without reservation. The mail
and news client has been improving but still needs some work.

Re:I don't think it should catch on yet

[sstory]

What I said was correct. Whether additional software (Netscape) ameliorates the problem is not the issue.

The New Netscape Is Wonderful!

[Anonymous Coward]

At last, Netscape got everything right! They fixed the ongoing bloatware problem - Netscape is now a 380,000 byte lightweight executable - they fixed all the basic annoying bugs and open connection crashes and problems with all the browsers locking up when one was hung - they removed all the extraneous and pointless flotsam like pointing mistyped domain names back at their own search engine - and hitting the Reload button actually reloads from the web server as you'd expect instead of off your hard disk! It's so fast too, pops right up to a blank window in about half a second, ready to surf. It's finally what people actually want in a browser! Download it right now!

Linux Users Get the Shaft on this release.

[Dolemite_the_Wiz]

In the Release notes, Linux users need to be aware of the following:

- Pages with Flash will, in worst cases, crash or hang your browser.
- Netscape will hang if a Flash plugin tries to play audio and the audio device is already in use
- Flash may crash with Exported X Display
- Java is not included with the Linux installer for Netscape 7.1. Download Java version 1.4.2 or later at the Java web site
- You may encounter problems if you install Netscape in a root user environment then run as another user.
- Loading a page that contains a Flash plugin may cause Netscape to lock up if you are using an audio application.

Everyone else need to be aware of the following:

- For security reasons, Netscape does not allow connections to certain ports. To override this on a per-port basis, add a comma separated list of ports to defaults/all.js
- POP email becomes unusable if the profile is stored on a network drive.
- Stll no NTFS Support
- Netscape does not warn the user of a low disk space condition.
- Netscape may temporarily hang during LDAP autocomplete if network connectivity is broken.
- Do not share a profile between Netscape and Mozilla browsers. Doing this can lead to unpredictable results, which may include loss of Search settings and preferences and unchecked growth of the Bookmarks file (large enough to freeze your system).
- When visiting a SSL enabled site, the lock icon will take on a yellow background, and will not indicate the strength of the SSL encryption used, whether it is 40 bit, 56 bit, or 128 bit.

Dolemite
_________________

Re:Linux Users Get the Shaft on this release.

[Malc]

"Stll no NTFS Support"

Netscape/Mozilla do a lot, but I don't think this should be on the feature list. That's up to the OS.

Hmmm, on second thoughts, perhaps you meant NTLM.

Re:Linux Users Get the Shaft on this release.

[BZ]

Every single Flash issue you list is a bug in the Linux version of the Flash plugin....

Re:Linux Users Get the Shaft on this release.

[RighteousFunby]

- Pages with Flash will, in worst cases, crash or hang your browser.
- Netscape will hang if a Flash plugin tries to play audio and the audio device is already in use
- Flash may crash with Exported X Display
- Java is not included with the Linux installer for Netscape 7.1. Download Java version 1.4.2 or later at the Java web site
- You may encounter problems if you install Netscape in a root user environment then run as another user.
- Loading a page that contains a Flash plugin may cause Netscape to lock up if you are using an audio application.

Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.

Re:Linux Users Get the Shaft on this release.

[acoustiq]

- Stll no NTFS Support

Do you mean NTLM? I've heard that holds back corporate acceptance in many places. I know it's supported in Mozilla 1.4, if only in Windows. Vote for bug 23679 to give your support

Netscape 4.78 and nothing else after that

[execom]

Take any web site, like bank web site, with secure session. What they said :

Requirement:
Version 4.01 - 6 of Microsoft® Internet Explorer or
NetscapeTM NavigatorTM 4.08- 4.78 inclusive.

Like all version after 4.78 were rogue, unsupported by any web sites.

Can anyone can tell me what's happen after that version 4.78 ?

Why nobody want to support it after this version ?
Will this version 7.1 will be 'compatible' with the 4.78 ?

Re:Netscape 4.78 and nothing else after that

[MartinB]

This is nothing to do with "could it work with $browser" and everything to do with "have we fully (and I mean *fully* tested) $browser with our systems to the level that we can guarantee it will work"

Banks don't work any other way.

Re:Netscape 4.78 and nothing else after that

[ocelotbob]

Any ssl-equipped website? No. I browse several websites with SSL, and I rarely, if ever see a specific browser version as bing "required". If they do need a specific browser, I just move on, and mentally place said company on my bastard list, that is, companies I won't do business with.

Though if your bank is bitching about needing a specific version of netscape, why not call them up, and ask them what's up, or file an evangelism bug on mozilla's bugzilla site? Lack of support for Mozilla-derived browsers is just plain stupid, as more and more people are dumping NS 4.x as the later versions of NS get better and better, or they discover other browsers, such as Mozilla.

Re:Netscape 4.78 and nothing else after that

[devnullify]

My bank simply lists Netscape 4.06 or better. And it works great with Firebird. Hell, they even mention Linux in the supported browsers/OSs:

* Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) version 4.01 Service Pack 2 (SP2) or higher
* Netscape Navigator version 4.06 or higher

*Beta browsers are not supported

Operating System:
You must have a 32-bit operating system - Windows 95, 98, 2000,NT, ME; MAC 7.5 and higher; Linux 2.2

Re:Netscape 4.78 and nothing else after that

[toddestan]

My bank lists Netscape 6.xx-7.xx, IE 5.xx-6.xx, and the various AOL browsers which are just IE in disguise anyway.

Funny thing is, it works just dandy with Opera, which is I use so no complaints.

Re:Netscape 4.78 and nothing else after that

[execom]

Already called them.
In fact, I wanted to have support for Safari 1.0 but they respond me that only IE or Netscape 4.78 would be supported.
Hope it will change.

Re:Netscape 4.78 and nothing else after that

[ocelotbob]

Does Safari do browser spoofing? If so, I'd say spoof it to almost look like NS 4.78, but put a comment on the end of the UA string to say something like "doesn't work as well as Safari" so that hopefully their log analysis tools will pick up that maybe it would be a good idea to do some testing with other browsers.

maybe not

[mblase]

I've just installed the 1.4 version on their FTP site, and clicking About Mozilla says that it's the 2003/06/24 build. Which means either that it hasn't been updated since RC3 at all, or that they haven't actually placed the 2003/06/30 final build in that ftp directory.

I would install it, but...

[The Lynxpro]

Netscape 7.1 is based on Mozilla 1.4 which is the last version of that tree. Mozilla Firebird (Phoenix) is the future of Mozilla and that is what I use. AOL Netscape should've waited for the next release of Firebird and based 7.1 on it instead...

Re:I would install it, but...

[GreenBugsBunny]

I'd bet they wanted to have a release based on the final 'suite' version of mozilla. Now they are all caught up and can base netscape 8 on firebird/thunderbird.

Just a guess, though

Re:I would install it, but...

[ocelotbob]

I disagree. The next few "stable" versions of mozilla are going to be somewhat broken as they migrate to [thunder,fire]bird and rewrite a good amount of the underlying code to make it even faster and better. Additionally, 1.4 is going to be a long-lived branch, thus bug/security fixes are going to be backported to it, much like they're backported to Mozilla 1.0.x. This leads to assurances that 7.1.x are going to be as stable as possible, and free from security problems. Not every stable version of Mozilla is supported; unless the mozilla team says otherwise, the best way to think of releases is as gamma-level software. Pretty close to bug-free, but at the same time, not as bulletproof as a supported release.

Re:Netscape?

[mobets]

(spell checker can be added on to mozilla)

I keep seeing that, but nobody has posted a link, so I will. http://spellchecker.mozdev.org/

Re:Netscape?

[sremick]

Netscape does matter because the Mozilla is officially not an end-user browser. Sure, there are lots of us who use Mozilla just fine and are happy, but for newbies, installing/working-with/dealing-with mozilla is a task over their heads. While many of us know where to get answers for Mozilla issues, newbies want to be able to go to www.mywebbrowsername.com and click on a big HELP button.

Understandably, the mozilla team wishes to focus on making a browser technology, not supporting newbies. They're leaving that to others who wish to build a browser based upon Mozilla and then provide end-user resources. Amongst these, Netscape is the biggest with wide name-recognition and lots of resources (relatively). So yes, the Netscape browser DOES matter.

Even Firebird isn't meant for end-users, although it's far more easily digestible by your typical end-user than the current Mozilla browser.

Re:Netscape?

[dubStylee]

it's an important part of browser history. It started the movement

Erm, what exactly did it start? The CERN browser started browsers. NCSA Mosaic started graphics browsers. I believe the Spry version of Mosaic was the first commercial browser though maybe that distinction goes to Netscape. I do agree it's an important part of browser history because it served as the lightning rod for MS bolts, but not because it was at the begining of anything other than the commercialization of the web.

Favorites? Start Menu? Programs Menu?

[psoriac]

Good grief, did you just admit to using Windows? On Slashdot? Are you INSANE?

Suggestion: Double Refresh

[Speare]

Here's a suggestion: if Reload has been clicked in the last second, and is clicked again, then perform a full reload instead of the default partial.

This is similar to the graduated selection gestures on Macintoshes and some terminal applications (click more often to select character, word, line, or paragraph).

I'm surprised more interface elements don't support graduated power, where a single click gives a happy-and-useful partial solution, a double-click does the same but is more inclusive in an obvious way. In this case, it's even more natural than the aforementioned text-selection: "dammit, refresh more!"

Re:Netscape?

[Bedouin X]

Netscape has had pop up blocking since 7.02. AOL is also trumpeting pop-up blocking software with its service now.

Please try to make informed statements.

Personnal info?

[Scrameustache]

Last time I tried to use a Netscape browser it wouldn't let me load a web page without spending 10 minutes filling out personnal information.

The damn thing kept telling me it was to better personalise the user experience in shared macines...I'M THE ONLY USER ON MY MACHINE I would scream at it, to no avail.

I won't even bother with downloading any more Netscapes without assurances that it has stopped being an information-gathering tool and that I now can surf the web without giving away my privacy to the browser company.

Safari has no configuration to go through, Safari is goodness.

Re:Personnal info?

[Hal The Computer]

Well I just downloaded Netscape 7.1 and I'm happy enough. It wanted to "register" me but i just clicked "cancel" and it went away. It did leave an annoying AOL Instant Messanger icon on my desktop, but a "two-click delete" (patent pending) solved that. You should be able to tell it to just use one config.

(Hint: Screaming won't work, it can't hear you ;-) )

Re: load

[cHiphead]

as a matter of fact, virginian people working for AOL that live less than 10 miles from the AOL corporate campus are still stuck with dialup.

Suggestion

[Anonymous Coward]

How about not writing it as "OS.X"? There is no logical basis for adding in the period, and of course there is no conventional support for doing so.

OS X

That is how you write it. I could at least understand the "OS/X" people because they could be thinking of "OS/2" (-- I don't excuse it, only understand it). No excuse for the period.

Image Resizing

[blackmonday]

Am I the only one who hates image resizing? I like full size pr0n, thank you.

Re:Image Resizing

[leifm]

No you are not, I hate it as well, at least the way it's implemented in IE. Give me the option of shrinking the image to fit, with the full size on displayed first, not the other way around.

Re:Image Resizing

[devnullify]

Type about:config in the address bar (at least in Mozilla/Firebird). Find browser.enable_automatic_image_resizing, double click it, and change it to false.

Another one, general.SmoothScroll turns off smooth scrolling.

Two of IEs most annoying 'features', I can't figure out why they were added to Firebird. At least they're easy to turn off.

Re:Image Resizing

[Anonymous Coward]

So turn it off in the preferences.

Yes, it really is that simple in IE...

Re:Image Resizing

[compwizrd]

Say, can you print out one of your pr0n pics, and see if netscape resizes it to full page there as well?

If it handles it onscreen and on a printer, I'll be impressed.

You can keep the printout.

Pop up blocker removal?

[very]

Dude, your information is a little bit outdated.

Yes it's true that Netscape removed the Pop-Up Blocking feature in netscape 7, but it was brought back in Netscape 7.02

One difference is that it has a listing of sites that would be allowed to display pop-ups (pop-up allowed list).

for instance, Netscape 7.01, 7.02, and 7.1 allow pop-ups from:
netscape.com
aol.com
netflix.com
cnn.com , etc.

look at your privacy settings.
They can easily be removed.

Offtopic

[mdielmann]

Cute sig, but I have a question for you - why do so many practice it?

Re:Netscape?

[Guppy06]

Um... Netscape has had the pop-up blockers un-hidden since 7.02. Edit/Preferences/Privacy & Security/Popup Window Controls.

1.4final same as 1.4rc3

[ChrisCampbell47]

I've just installed the 1.4 version on their FTP site, and clicking About Mozilla says that it's the 2003/06/24 build. Which means either that it hasn't been updated since RC3 at all, or that they haven't actually placed the 2003/06/30 final build in that ftp directory.

1.4 final is indeed the same as 1.4 RC3 -- the only change is a name change. Source: moz developer IRC channel.

Re:1.4final same as 1.4rc3

[Anonymous Coward]

Does that mean we can hang the last release of the Mozilla suite with a simple html page? (bugzilla link, either disable referrer or copy&paste)

Re: Should be +3 Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who says the 4.x version of Netscape were decent never tried to develop for them and still maintain compatibility with IE (yes, it might be Microsoft's fault, but IE became the defacto standard due to its heavy adoption).

You got that backassward. Netscape 4 had a completely proprietary object model (Layers) and a completley proprietary style system (JavaScript Style Sheets).

Microsoft, on the other hand, was generally on the W3C standards track, before they stopped giving a shit.

CSS LOL

[siphoncolder]

from the post:
"even better CSS support"

i.e. from suck to blow.

Any source for MD5 checksums?

[JLyle]

I am downloading mozilla-win32-1.4-installer.exe from the BitTorrent link posted here but for paranoia's sake I would like to check it against the official Mozilla release. Does the Mozilla project post MD5 checksums for its releases anywhere? I didn't see them in the download directory.

find-as-you-type...

[Anonymous Coward]

"find-as-you-type", because the vocabulary and concept of "incremental-search" is far beyond the intellectual capabilities of the average web surfer.

Nobody that's who

[bogie]

Only a few companies still use Netscape. I frankly don't even know why AOL/Netscape even bothers anymore. I mean it's not like they are trying to gain marketshare from IE. If they were don't you think they would do more than put up a link on Netscape.com and rely on other websites to link to it for PR?

Netscape died a long time ago but luckily was reborn with Mozilla. Netscape may not give a crap about spending dollar one on PR for Netscape, but conversly it just shows how good Mozilla is that it continues to get good press.

I really wish Netscape would just stop offering Netscape browser for download. Its an insult to the Mozilla browser that they continue to do zero PR effort on the Netscape browser while spending hundreds of millions on AOL advertising.

Re:Nobody that's who

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I find that Netscape 7.xx has given me much better performance than Mozilla browsers, including greater stability. It's pretty crazy if you ask me, because right now in this Windows XP installation I shouldn't even be able to use a Gecko-based browser w/out page loads taking my mouse away from me for about 2 seconds (Temporary freeze, same with 2k/2k3). I just installed this on a whim and it's working like a charm.

I de-selected the spell-check & mail/im stuff because quite frankly I don't need either of 'em, and I only had two (That's right two) short-cuts to remove (Oh, well, actually three, since I don't like having my browser in the root of my start menu). I'll have to see how well it performs under Linux, because lately I've been getting sick of Mozilla's (And Firebird's) performance, using both releases and nightlies on various operating systems.

It's too bad that AOL/Netscape doesn't spend more on PR, because it's a great browser, and I tell anyone I meet to use Netscape first if they're thinking about using Mozilla or Firebird, for the simple fact that Netscape is working on an end-user product that works remarkably well. Mozilla and Firebird have always been and will always be built by developers, largely for developers, and for that reason I don't like to recommend people use it right off the bat. It's a stepping-stone program for people that are not turned off by having to do about 1 minute's work in order to have a solidified end-product.

More ...

[Anonymous Coward]

7) Corporate deployment tools (that can prune the AOL junk)

8) Profile stability -- RTF Mozilla release notes about whiping profiles on upgrades.

9) Security patches that don't require one to roll out a "nightly".

I'd argue that the "name recognition" is a downside. In most people's minds, Netscape == Crap (for good reason after 4.x and 6.x).

Re:The continuation of monopolistic OSS/FS practic

[Anonymous Coward]

The key to the MS rulings was that they were ruled a monopoly, what monopoly are you asserting is being abused here? The rules are DIFFERENT for monopolies.

Re:1.4 is already out, just not on the web pages y

[Anonymous Coward]

If they haven't released it yet, don't announce it. There may be a reason.

Posting a link to an unreleased binary on slashdot is incredibly rude.

They are moving in that direction.

[Dhraakellian]

According to the roadmap, after releasing a stable version on which other browsers can be based, they're moving away from Seamonkey (the suite) to an architecture like that of Mozilla Firebird and Thunderbird.

Re:Netscape?

[hackstraw]

Its kinda mute, because IE does not run on any OS that I use on a regular basis. But I cannot even think of using IE until it shows me the urls before I click on them. There are other things that have bothered me about IE in the past, but I would even use Netscape 4.x over IE for this feature alone.

Re: load

[lanthis]

erm, that's not true at all. At present I can't get any kind of broadband at my house. Well, except Directv Directwav, but between the 800ms+ pings and this guy I work with had it and they cut him off because he "went over his alotted monthly download totals" because he was listening to streaming audio.. screw that.

Yes, but...

[Pig Hogger]

... Is it still a big bloated piece of crappy code???

Re:Yes, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

... Is it still a big bloated piece of crappy code???

Sorry, I'm afraid you'll have to look to Internet Explorer to fulfill your desire for a crappy, rarely updated and increasingly non-standards-compliant web browser.

Re:Yes, but...

[kalidasa]

... Is it still a big bloated piece of crappy code???

Currently it's a 29.2M download for everything (Sun Java, Winamp, you name it). Bigger and more bloated than I'd want, but there are reduced versions. Mozilla is a much more bearable 10.4 MB, but I don't think that includes Java or Flash.

Re:Yes, but...

[reallocate]

Gee, you think if you added everything in the Netscape package to Mozilla, it just might weigh in at 29.2M, too?

Go for the custom install and pick only what you want.

Re:Yes, but...

[kalidasa]

Gee, you think if you added everything in the Netscape package to Mozilla, it just might weigh in at 29.2M, too?

Well, since that was the implication of my posting, why, yes!!!

Re:Netscape?

[cyt0plas]

Netscape has SNS support for AOL/Netscape/Compuserve users. SNS passes the AOL login to sites which need to authenticate - sort of a "single sign-on for the web". Very cool if you're an AOL user.

Yeah, and it's also easy if you need a quick and easy way of harvesting large amounts of verified email addresses to put on a sucker list.

Re:CSS

[mark_lybarger]

this would be a great feature. if i could put my mozilla profile (including skin, and all other changes) onto mozilla.org or someplace like that, then wehn ever i stepped to a new browser i could have it use my settings. i don't really like switching constatly the search engine from netscape to google.

Re:1.4 is already out, just not on the web pages y

[Anonymous Coward]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=69402&cid=6332 329

Way to copy a post from 5 minutes ago. Ass.

and it still cannot handle file:

[42.5]

Try this yourself.

1) Create a standard (RFC 1738, 3.10) URL like file://filesrvr/share/readme.txt.
2)Use Netscape to follow the link.
3) It just sits there!

Re:and it still cannot handle file:

[Anonymous Coward]

dude, you forgot
4) ???
5) Profit!!!

dumbass. c'mon, what are you, new??

Xft Linux builds

[terracon]

I just can't live without Xft enabled Linux builds. I currently use Xft/gtk2 Mozilla Firebird and I like it alot. I'd like to try this but without smooth web fonts I don't think I would use it but I'll probably download/install it to check it out but I'll be loading Mozilla Firebird as my primary browser.

RELOAD should mean RELOAD

[scosol]

It's really as simple as that...

"ditch all cached objects and reload the page"

I'm clicking that button for a reason...

Re:RELOAD should mean RELOAD

[Anonymous Coward]

I click reload to find out what has changed in the HTML.
Not in every single linked object.
Reload, reloads page. Very simple concept.
If you, for some perverse reason, want every single thing reloaded, disable caching. You obviously don't need it.

I'm on a cable connection, and still don't see the point in wasting the bandwidth.

Nitwit.

Re:RELOAD should mean RELOAD

[Anonymous Coward]

All browsers have alwayz worked that way. Hitting reload reloads the page from the cache. But holding down shift and hitting reload reloads a new page from the web site instead. All browsers have been doing this since netscape 3 came out. Even IE does the same thing. If you want it to reload from the web site instead of by the cache by default, well mozilla is open source, download the source and make the change. Stop complaining and actually DO something about it if you really want it so badly.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:On an unrelated, note

[DebianDog]

You're SUPPOSED to capitalize AOL. ;-) Say it with me "acronym".

What's up with the fonts ?

[Anonymous Coward]

So I installed Netscape 7.1 on my Redhat 8.0.
And as expected the fonts looked terrible, compared
to my XFT-build of Mozilla 1.3.
I'm not going to use it ever again. Way to
go Netscape !

Re:CSS

[Saige]

Well, some of us would like to stop using Netscape 4 at work, but our IT department seems unwilling to offer another browser for our Sun development machines.

Well, actually they do have a .8 version of Mozilla available, which they seem unwilling to upgrade for some reason...

Re:Netscape?

[Delphiki]

Actually, unless a site uses javascript to specifically prevent this, IE does do this. I'm using IE 6 right now because that's all that's installed here at work, and it shows the url in the status bar at the bottom of the page when you mouse over a link.

Re: load

[hendrix69]

I agree. The Palm Sync feature would have been a nice added value, but it only syncs with the address book. If it were to sync with the mozilla calendar and mail, then... then we'de have something to talk about. I could throw away that hideous Palm Desktop finally.

Do we need all of these?

[Luzumsuz Lazim]

...features many improvements... including spam filters,... Palm synchronization and more...

I hate this. I am a relatively smart person, above average for sure, and I live within computers all day, yet these densely packed programs manage to confuse me. Does it have to support Palm synchronization or do we really need to combine the web browser and the mail client? If they feel that they are good at these areas as well, they can produce a separate product(s) which can communicate with each other, but can also work independently.

Adding more properties is not the challenge, adding them transparent to the user is the challenge. I want to see neither millions of buttons in toolbar nor millions of options when i press the 2nd mouse button on the canvas. Ex. can someone tell me why do I need to press the 2nd mouse button and choose the "back/forward" in the pop-up menu, which may appear in different locations w.r.t. the pointer depending on the pointer position, instead of just clicking the "back/forward" icon in the toolbar?

Well I am sure that someone will find an absurd reason for this, thus let me respond it beforehand: Then, I need the "Sort the lines shown on this page w.r.t. the second word on each line" item in the same pop-up window. I need this once in every about 3 months. I can hear another reply. Here is my answer: Be realistic. Most of the users do not disable the toolbar. Thus, instead of making it complex to keep the minority happy, it can be programed as a dynamic menu depending on the toolbar status. (Well, I must admit, I didn't install Netscape 7.1 yet, but this is the defacto behavior for almost all browsers I saw -- Himm... I'm not sure about Safari I should check this next time I use it.) If Netscape 7.1 addresses these kind of issues, can someone point this out for me?

The bottom line is that we need simple looking but powerful software, not a messy software with kitchen-sink included.

Re:Do we need all of these?

[swordgeek]

Part of your answer is (or will be) Mozilla 1.5. After the current release of Mozilla (1.4), they're making the big jump to de-monolith the project. There will be an entirely separate browser, email/news, and IRC program which work together.

As far as the million buttons/million options problem, I find mozilla better than average, after two minutes of work. I get rid of the "print," "search," "go," and "home" buttons as well as closing the sidebar, and I end up with an extremely clean looking simple browser. (even better with the new "nautilus" theme).

Quite honestly though, Microsoft had a brilliant and as far as I know original (gasp!) idea with Windows2000: Context-limited menus. These are the menus that hide all of the rare and infrequently used items until you let your cursor hover for a few seconds. Your commonly used items are therefore always available instantly, and the oddball ones gradually make themselves invisible unless needed.

Re: Should be +3 Funny

[devnullify]

It was competition until IE 5.0, I'm sorry to say. With that release IE was *way* faster, rendered pages properly, and had a better interface. Sorry to say it, but Netscape 4.x *WAS* trash, it's just that IE4 was worse.

Nowadays of course, Mozilla and Opera are both superior to IE6.

Netscape is good

[Bulln-Bulln]

Yeah, Netscape is good. I haven't read all the comments here, but there are (as always) comments like ''Why not use Mozilla instead?''
I tell you why:
Netscape has more features and is easier for people without good computer knowledge.

I prefer Mozilla Firebird, but the plain MF is not for normal users.
They have to ''unzip'' it, they have to copy Flash and other plugins into the plugins directory, they have to install Java manually and so on.

OTOH Netscape:
It comes with good, licensed spell checking (sorry, but OSS spell checkers suck - at least non-english ones), there's AIM and ICQ support, all important plugins are bundled, and Netscape adds important settings to the Windows registry (the location where it's installed for 3rd party plugins - a small, but important setting).

Currently I create installer builds of Mozilla Firebird (bundled with Flash and Java) for my friends, but that's only an acceptable solution for a handful of people.
It's easier to point to a simple URL than giving a CD with my custom MF to everyone.
Yes I know, there are also installer builds of Mozilla Firebird available on the net, but that's sometimes even too complicated for a few of my friends.
When I say ''Get Netscape. It's on Netscape dot com.'' It's easy.
When I say ''Get Mozilla Firebird. It's on geocities dot com slash blablabla slash ... umm... sorry, I forgot the adress. I tell you tomorrow.'' It's more coplicated. Also: what happens, if the person does not provide the installer any more? Who guaranties me and my friends that the webpage is still up in a month or two.
AOL is behind Netscape. I can be sure that Netscape will last a while. Netscape is easy to find, easy to install, and easy to use. That's why Netscape is good.

Sun offers Netscape 7.0, Mozilla 1.2.1

[jmilne]

Umm, you can download Netscape 7.0 and Mozilla 1.2.1 from Sun here. Give them time, and you might even find Netscape 7.1 now that it's been released.

Re:Sun offers Netscape 7.0, Mozilla 1.2.1

[fm6]

OK, I jumped to conclusions. But netscape.com does manage to imply that only Windows, OS X, and Linux versions are available.

Opera7 is the shit

[scosol]

Really- I've been around the browsers for a LONG time.

Opera7 is the only thing that's kept me away from IE for over 6 months.
AND
It (along with mplayer) are the reasons I can use Linux on my laptop.
Mozilla and Phoenix just never had the snappy response that IE did.
Of course unde Linux IE isn't an option... so-
Opera7 does it- under Windows and Linux it SCREAMS.

Re:Netscape?

[ssstraub]

Everytime I'm forced to use IE (read: work and friends' houses that I haven't converted), it is quite shocking how often one click turns into three. One to click and link and two more to close the random pop-up ads. I can't believe that anyone can stand surfing the web while being constantly bombarded by these things.

Enter pop-up blocking. Haven't seen a pop-up in MONTHS. And that's only ONE of the wonderful features about the mozilla-based browsers.

finally, the voice of reason

[Kunta Kinte]

... but because without Netscape, there would be no Mozilla. Let's face it, Mozilla relies on Netscape, and as a result, AOL, for life support.

It's amazing how this point goes over the heads of many mozilla users.

Most of mozilla's fulltime development team is on AOL's payroll. Even if you don't agree with how AOL does business, we have to understand mozilla wouldn't be anyway close to where it is today without their financial support.

Mozilla needs AOL/Netscape to continue to grow it its current rate.

Still no Antialias supported?

[Manic Ken]

I d/l an run it, but it looks horrible. Is there not antialias support built in? I am using mozilla with antialias and I cant go back on that!! Tell me that I am stupid and just have to check a box saying "antialias" some where..

For those of us who haven't used IE in a while...

[ssstraub]

Here's a reminder of what it's like:

IE Simulator

mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

this is actually a really amusing post, esp. the reference to the Dead Milkmen's "RC's Mom"... anyone out there even remotely interested in good music will see that this post is not flamebait, but just humorous.

Re:mod parent up

[meta.chris]

I believe it's actually Stuart, but I agree with the sentiment :)

DO NOT INSTALL 1.4

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus christ.. whatever you do, do NOT install Mozilla 1.4. I did and now my back and forward buttons are gone. I mean, they are there but constantly greyed out. And the keyboard shortcuts for back/forward history navigation don't work, either.

FUCK.

I hear ya. What's up with that? (nt)

[Anonymous Coward]

no text

Re: load

[jc42]

A reload that doesn't reload graphics is a pain in the ass when you're trying to debug the graphics on your web page.

So far, the best way I've found is:

1. Right-click (with 3-button mouse) or click-and-hold (OSX) to get the menu, and select "View Image". This gets you a new page with just the old image in the upper left.

2. Click the Reload button in that window.

3. Click the Back button. Your page will now show the new image.

4...N Repeat the above for every friggin' image you're working on.

You'd think they'd have a little pity for web developers.

How hard would it be for Shift-Reload to reload everything?

(Yeah; I just checked; it doesn't.)

SGI / IRIX... somewhat true

[green pizza]

In the case of IRIX, SGI is just facing reality: they've never made a dent in the desktop market, and it's not worth spending money to make their workstations do things people can do more cheaply with Wintel systems. When I worked there, they didn't even have up-to-date Quicktime codecs!

This is somewhat true. However, SGI does work on an IRIX port of Mozilla. Their OSS site has some builds of Mozilla, as does their Freeware site. The most recent available now is 1.4rc1, but 1.4 will be in the next quarterly Freeware update. Mozilla 1.02 currently ships with the most recent version of IRIX and will be replaced with 1.4 (or maybe 1.4.1) later this year.

Heck, if you want to dig thru even more of their freeware collection, visit the site or use the following exact string to have Software Manager connect to it directly:
swmgr -f http://freeware.sgi.com/Inst/
(you -do- need that tailing slash)

As far as the Quicktime codecs, that's more of a matter of customer demand. Most of SGI's customers use their machines to work on uncompressed HD video with software like Discreet Inferno or IFX Piranha. True, it would be nice to be able to view modern compressed Quicktime video on an IRIX box, but it's not needed by most of their customers. They are slowly supporting more off the shelf hardware, which is nice. IRIX 6.5.20 and newer support the Revolution 7.1 PCI sound card, which is waaaay cheaper than using SGI's digital audio card and a breakout box or mixer.

One solution!

[deathcow]

If you really need to be sure it's fetched from the server, add something to the URL.

http://www.slashdot.org?fuglybot=12

No cache will have that.

I usually shift->reload though.

Re:One solution!

[deathcow]

Of course, you may want to do it correctly, like:

http://slashdot.org/topics.shtml?fuglybot=12

Doesn't lend itself to default documents well.

Re:One solution!

[Anonymous Coward]

He forgot a "/", but what's wrong with "http://slashdot.org/?fuglybot=13"? Default documents can be scripts, too...

Re:One solution!

[deathcow]

Another nice thing is, you can bypass any clients insane desire to cache when doing this. I've had pages where, no matter what, some clients (several out of hundreds of users) just kept getting the cached older version of a page. Sure, you can beat them to death trying to get them to check their caching settings. Or, just put a random number on the querystring.

(asp example)
randomize
$url = "http://site.com/url?RX=" & int(rnd(1)*1000000)+1
response.write $url

Starting to get the non-geeks

[dimer0]

This surprised me... Last week, I've converted two of my not-so-savvy neighbors up the block to Mozilla. They never want to use IE again.

Popup blocking was their #1 concern. They were amazed how mozilla handled this. "Why doesn't IE do this?".. Ugh

Once I showed them tabbed browsing, they were in love.

Couple things, tho, that could help:

1) First guy I installed Phoenix for, upgraded to Mozilla 1.4rc3 because of the friendly reminder he was running an old build. Umm.. Don't tell my non-savvy neighbors they need to switch product lines when their home page comes up.

2) Would be nice if there was a bundle build you could grab with flash, java, etc - installed. Or at least something that goes and looks for the java plugin on your system and registers with that, instead of having to reinstall the java plugin to set the hooks that way.. (Is this possible?)

The tide is turning, tho..

Re:Dude

[Le Marteau]

dude you can scroll with the wheel, but you can't CLICK on the wheel and then move the mouse down or up to scroll nicely

That functionality is annoying in IE... you start slow, then moving down, scrolling about an inch a second, then you move the moust down an eigth of an inch and WHAMMO, with amazing speed, it scrolls to the end of the page. Needs more gradations.

Netscape/Mozilla vs. Internet Explorer..

[msimm]

Problem with the browser war is as an employee or a student there is a good chance you will *need* Internet Explorer, but what's the chance of needing Netscape?

The business I work for tends to do a lot of work online, things like banking and payroll. We use the ADP web entry system (buggy) that is not compatible with Mozilla (haven't tried Netscape) we also have a international booking system which is not compatible with Netscape/Mozilla. A few key features like this is more then enough to turn the average use off of anything but the tool that works. I can't think a single example where it was necessary to use Mozilla instead of IE.

I know none of this is really about Netscape or Mozilla, but Microsoft has their market pretty locked down with proprietary extensions and incompatibilities.

Mozilla will win some users with features like pop-up blocking and on-the-fly html editing. But we need a real zinger to actually pull people away from a built=in browser that works on a larger part of the sites people visit.

I've converted my work place over to Mozilla, but at least once a month someone comes to me complaining that they can't get a page to load and I have to tell them to use Internet Explorer (anyone who uses a site requiring activex more often already knows).

Re:Netscape/Mozilla vs. Internet Explorer..

[swordgeek]

We have an internal application that was written by a sleazy company who are currently charging us on a per-incident basis for finishing the software according to the original contract. It's buggy, badly written, and the ONLY site I've seen in six months that doesn't operate 100% under Mozilla.

Now that 1.4 is a reality, I'm going to make a run of all of the people I convinced to install 1.0, and force the upgrade on them if they haven't already. I was quite shocked to discover recently that my dad has actually been using Mozilla as his main (nearly only) browser since I installed 1.0 or 1.1 on his machine, back during the original release of those versions.

Mozilla 1.4 is solid, stable, full of really nice features (pop-up blocking is nice by itself, adding in white-lists or black-lists is great, but tabbed browsing wins people in a second!), and renders everything I've seen.

Re:Netscape/Mozilla vs. Internet Explorer..

[Anonymous Coward]

Refer users with security problems to Microsoft support. IE blew up your system with the worm du jour? Call Microsoft or install a better browser, as I won't fix your computer for you if you insist on using a browser which is at most fit for a trusted intranet.

Re:Netscape/Mozilla vs. Internet Explorer..

[dadragon]

My University's web portal requires Netscape or Mozilla to use certain features like the file transfer and web tests. If you log in using IE and try to use those features it tells you how insecure IE is and gives links to download Mozilla and Netscape.

~/ is the key

[Anonymous Coward]

That's only if you install Mozilla in your home directory. Not everyone does. Not even Once.

Re:~/ is the key

[Thorgal]

I am posting this from Mozilla installed in /usr/local/mozilla. The link in my ~/.mozilla/plugins is seemingly enough, as Java works. Try it yourself.

Re:Dude

[Anonymous Coward]

I installed AutoScroll from http://autoscroll.mozdev.org/ in Mozilla 1.4 RC2 and it worked fine for me. Have you tried installing it?

Netscape for Sun Solaris and SGI IRIX

[green pizza]

Netscape 7 for Solaris is available for download deep within Sun's site. You should be able to find it with a Sun Solaris Netscape google search string.

SGI no longer ports Netscape, 4.80 was their last version. They now port Mozilla instead. There are three places to get Mozilla for IRIX:
* The latest IRIX Applications CD (ships with each quarterly IRIX update) has the oldest supported version (currently 1.0.2 -- same version that Netscape 7.02 uses).
* The IRIX Freeware Collection (http://freeware.sgi.com) has a more recent version, but can be as much as 4 months old.
* The SGI OSS Site (http://oss.sgi.com) has sporadic builds. Though the front page mentions 1.4a, if you surf you way to the Mozilla Download section you'll find 1.4rc1. I've been told indirectly that 1.4 final will be posted soon.

For IRIX, the easiest way to install Mozilla is to fire up Software Manager and tell it to look at the freeware collection. Deselect everything ("unmark all") and then select just Mozilla (or Phoenix, or Evolution, or whatever you really want to install...). You may have to click the conflicts button and work out any dependencies that arise.
The magic command is:
swmgr -f http://freeware.sgi.com/Inst/
(you need that trailing slash, and give it plenty of time to load... it takes about 2 minutes on an O2 R10K/250 on a decent DSL connection).

Is it spyware?

[setzman]

Previous versions have always brought up the registration screen every time you load the damn thing until you report all your information to AOL. Using netstat -a shows connections to different AOL servers even after these screens are completed. What exactly is it reporting?

Re:Netscape?

[Media Tracker]

It's more complicated than that. First Mozilla was a branch of Netscape Communicator; then they decided to re-write the browser from scratch using the XPFE framework; then Netscape used the Mozilla code to make Netscape 6 and following versions.

Netscape 1.0

[green pizza]

Netscape 2 (I don't think there ever was a released Netscape 1, was there? Netscape 1 was the commercialization of Mosaic)

You're right about Mosaic... the "original" Netscape was technically NSCA Mosaic. However, the first public official Netscape release was actually 0.something. I belive it was 0.9. I switched from Mosaic to Netscape at version 0.97 on my Mac and SGI. Then came Netscape 1.0, 1.1, 1.12...

Netscape 2.0 was the beginning of the end. Livescript ("Javascript"), animated GIFs, plugins, frames... it was all downhill from there. =)

Eagerly awaited??

[deadgoon42]

I didn't even know it existed. The only people who use Netscape are people who are out of touch with reality and they probably are still using Netscape Gold. Ahhh, Netscape Gold.

Why is the OSX version dated 24 june?

[jpellino]

Anyone kow? Was it finished then? Is it an old rc3? SHould I wait a few hours?

Re:Netscape?

[Anonymous Coward]

When he said, "...without Netscape, there would be no Mozilla. Let's face it, Mozilla relies on Netscape, and as a result, AOL, for life support.", he meant that Mozilla (the browser) relies on Netscape (the company) for support.

I'll continue to use thunderbird

[Anonymous Coward]

(hic!) I'ssle conthinue uzzhink (hic!) thunderbird too, thankyouse(hic~)verrrymush (hic!) 'cept when Ise be uszzhingk maddog 2020 (hic!) instead (hic!)

Re:Opera7 is the sh*t

[okvol]

Saw Opera7 on "The Recruit". So even the CIA preferes it.

Re:CSS

[Anonymous Coward]

> I for one like having my browser decrypt Content Scramble System encoded DVDs.

You need *DeCSS* to do that and that's "illegal" so AOL/Time-Warner's Netscape doesn't support it.

There's nothing "illegal" about CSS, so Netscape includes it so that you can create encoded DVDs from your browser.

Re: load

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd think they'd have a little pity for web developers.

Therein lies the fatal flaw in your assumption. You should realize by now that coders regard web monkeys as slightly above infants. Web design doesn't require any coding skill. First of all, the term "Web Developers" is laughable since there is no development that goes on. This is tantamount to interior decorators calling themselves civil engineers or architects. Once you HTML goons get that through your head, then maybe we programmers will throw you a bone. Until then, pull your collective head out of your ass and realize that you are NOT programmers. I repeat, you are NOT programmers. You are glorified word processors. You know what... I take it back. We won't even give you a bone because of your attitudes. Instead, we'll just code WYSIWYG editors for web sites so that HR and Administrative Assistants can take care of that crap and then we can be done with you fuckers once and for all. Good riddance.

Re:1.4 is already out, just not on the web pages y

[faaaz]

Unreleased? If it's on the public server for all to see, then I'd say that it is released.

I just wanted to say...

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to name your browser after a show that just got cancelled. What a feeling of confidence that gives me. :P

Mozilla and (blush) systems resources

[drdale]

Okay, I confess that I'm a lamer. Not only do I run Windows, but I still run Win 98SE. But I decided to download Mozilla 1.4 today, making one feeble gesture toward geekhood. But you may remember that 98 still has the old system resources constraint, and Mozilla is an absolute pig for the resources. Makes it hard to run it along with any other programs. But it does seem to be pretty good about giving up the resources once it is closed.

Re:Mozilla and (blush) systems resources

[Reziac]

The resource suckage problem is precisely why after fiddling with Moz 1.0x, I reverted to Moz 0.99 RC1 (on both Win98 and Win95 -- and you thought YOU were retro! :) 0.99 uses far less resources, seldom crashes, and doesn't dirty up Windows near as much.

0.99 still leaks like a sieve when used to view local dirtrees, but at least it doesn't manifest the leakage while viewing online content. 1.0x did, to the point of rapidly crashing (and unlike any other app I run, taking Windows with it).

BTW this is why I think there is still core Mosaic code in Mozilla; there is a specific resource leak common to NS and IE (it's in ALL versions, but manifests to various degrees, from "barely at all" to "omighod" in different builds) that is suspiciously similar.

No news

[Pieroxy]

I have mozilla 1.2.1 and that works. It's not a new feature!

Mozilla

[milesbparty]

So when is the new version of Mozilla out?

Re:CSS

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if a roaming profiles was added to Netscape/Mozilla, I could completely switch.

Except for some minor tidbits, this feature is about ready to be checked in. There is however some question on how things will work what with Firebird and all that crap (reorganization and stuff).
There's an experimental Beonex (a browser based upon Mozilla, just like Netscape) build out there somewhere that already has this feature working.

Buffy??

[Anonymous Coward]

Buffy? BUFFY??

I ain't downloadin' *nuthin* with such a geek-ass fanboy name.

Agreed...

[msimm]

But sites like ADP still exist (and ADP is one of the leading payroll processing companies in America). The fact is I cant do business without Internet Explorer, I am locked in to it.

Of course its even more frustrating for the average user, trying to explain why two pieces of software apparently designed to do the same thing, but can't, makes one seem better then the other.

Even worse, the web developers who create these sites are fairly nonplused by this issue (what's Mozilla's market share?). Standards compliance still seems like something of a non-issue, but I really hope tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking continue to help Mozilla make inroads (my mom discovered Firebird on her own and loves it).

Still, reading the announcement for Netscape I was hoping for some real gee-wiz factor. Opera announcements always sound so starry eyed. Just another Netscape without any fanfare won't generate much new interest (do they want to fail?).

Shift Click Reload

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't that sound like a good title for a matrix sequil or prequil?

He's Talking About Who Pays Mozilla's Bills

[reallocate]

Wrong. He's not talking who uses who's code. He's talking about who pays Mozilla's bills.

Re:He's Talking About Who Pays Mozilla's Bills

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

Wrong. He's not talking who uses who's code. He's talking about who pays Mozilla's bills.

Regardless of what he's talking, it's just as relevant. What, no one could make a browser if netscape didn't fund it? Netscape has an inflated importance that everyone gives it which equates PRECISELY to SCOs inflated (self)importance in the Unix world. Which OS sponsor has to 'fund' Linux? Netscape is a big contributor, but NOT the reason that it is able to be produced, do not empower them with that.

Re:He's Talking About Who Pays Mozilla's Bills

[reallocate]

So, what then? Full-time Mozilla progammers are supposed to dump the family, the house, the car payments, the credit card bills and all the rest just to keep on coding Mozilla for free and the greater glory of open source? If someone would forego all that just to keep on coding for free, he needs a lot of help.

Your comparison of Netscape with SCO is silly. Has Netscape brought suit against IBM for infringement? Is Netscape keeping its PR department busy asserting its primacy in the world of browsers? No, of course not.

You seem to be placing a lot of stock in open source's ability to proceed without financial support from anyone, expecially all those corporations which most of the/. gang label "evil" out of blind reflex. What's so bad about being funded by someone? The "free" part of free software has nothing to do with who pays the programmers.

Re:He's Talking About Who Pays Mozilla's Bills

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

Your comparison of Netscape with SCO is silly. Has Netscape brought suit against IBM for infringement? Is Netscape keeping its PR department busy asserting its primacy in the world of browsers? No, of course not.

You really seem to think I am aiming this at Netscape, I am not. My comparison is that Netscape is as important to the project as SCO is to Unix. Both are conrtibutors, both are 'big' players in that they have name recognition and some degree of resources. However, both Unix and Mozilla could survive without either of them.
As a businessman I am aware that funding is vital to a project. I have personally worked on projects where the 'chief' financier dropped out and I did not shrivel up and die, I found OTHER SOURCES. I do not think that OS developers should work free, I am not that naive. Just wake up, there are lots of sources for capital. My whole point is only that Netscape is just a figurehead at this point, albeit a contributing one. Heck, even Linux could survive if Linus found an island and went native.

BTW, I place no stock in OS ability to go on for free

Where's the upgrade option?

[variable26]

...as usual no upgrade function in Netscape!

Wouldn't it be nice if they added an upgrade icon or a upgrade option in the browser?

Anyone know how to deploy this on a windows 2000?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a deployment msi or an easy way to install Netscape 7.1?

Thanks,

that was version 5

[imtheguru]

Saw Opera7 on "The Recruit". So even the CIA preferes it.

That was actually Opera version 5 on a mac. u can read the Opera forum thread and see the screenshot.

Cheers,

Re: load

[jc42]

Wow! That was an elegant summary of the attitude. Thanks.

Sorry I don't have moderator status, so I could give you a Funny point. Oh well, it's in response to my message, so I couldn't anyway. Maybe next time.

There's some irony here in the fact that I've spent much of the past week trying to get some javascript to work right on a variety of (mostly Windoze) systems. But today I think I finally persuaded them to give up, do it with a perl cgi script, and not try to do programming inside a web page.

So, in effect, I was arguing the same point, but from the approach that Web design shouldn't be programming.

I am also using Windows

[martrootamm]

I am using Windows, too and have always been (Linux has bad usability). And my main browsers are Netscape 4.08, Mozilla 1.2.1 and M. Firebird 0.6. And sometimes I use IE to perform software updates for Windows.

Eagerly-awaited?

[Pingsmoth]

I used to go out of my way to use Netscape. Problem was, Explorer was just better, faster, and more widely-supported. Most of all, it wasn't bloated. When Netscape 6 came out, they lost any chance at competing, and moreover, showed that they just didn't care anymore about putting out a competitive browser. Netscape 7 will be more of the same: bloated, slow, and *still* not as good of CSS support at Explorer. Sorry Netscape, you lose.

Re: Should be +3 Scary

[Reziac]

... cuz I'm still using NS 3.04, by *preference* (tho I have a shitload of newer browsers installed).

Only time I switch to Moz is when some site I *need* to use is infested with javascript.

Why Buffy ?

[The Famous Druid]

Was it called 'Buffy' becasue it 'slays' the competition?

Or was it because it's easy on the eye, but depressing, annoying and erratic ?

Re:Why Buffy ?

[The Famous Druid]

Or because its time has passed?

Try Mozilla Firebird

[martrootamm]

Check the system requirements for Mozilla to see if your computer has enough system resources to run it. Mozilla does takes up many resources (mainly RAM and swap space), so if it's slow for you, then consider having Mozilla Firebird instead. That one is based on Mozilla 1.4b's Gecko code, but is way less bloat.

I've also written a page with your situation in mind.

Re:Try Mozilla Firebird

[drdale]

Firebird might be better. I'm talking about the User and GDI resource stacks, though, not RAM and disk space.

In related news... (MacOS 9.x ditched)

[C A S S I E L]

...it appears that Netscape 7.1 is now OS X only on the Mac (no more MacOS 9 support - browsing the download site under OS 9 only gives an OS X download option), and the downloader stub for Netscape 7.02 no longer works, so presumably they've yanked that release.

I was all ready to jump to Mozilla, but that has also just become Mac OS X only.

You might be right

[martrootamm]

But this is what I concluded and deduced. Since I am not a programmer, then these are just a user's observations, therefore it's impossible for me to say where a program uses most resources when it shows that it's slow.

Re: load

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry. I replied to the wrong post. I thought that I might be dealing with someone who has a sense of humour. I was apparently mistaken. It won't happen again.

--Eat a steamy pile just for me.

Re:On an unrelated, note

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you familiar with proper, comma usage?