Slashdot Mirror
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."
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?
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.
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.
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde
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 (!)
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?
Hate me!
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.
Not me anyway - happy Opera-user
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
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.
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..
"I am not bound to please thee with my answers" [William Shakespeare]
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!
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
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.
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
Now if a roaming profiles was added to Netscape/Mozilla, I could completely switch.
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!
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?
Feel free to mod me "-1 - Angry Jerk".
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.
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.
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.
...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.
I think you have this backwards - Netscape was derived from Mozilla not the other way around.
If you can read this sig - the bitch fell off.
... 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*
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.
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.
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.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
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.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
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.
Yeah, Netscape is good. I haven't read all the comments here, but there are (as always) comments like ''Why not use Mozilla instead?''
... 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
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.
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.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
http://slashdot.org/topics.shtml?fuglybot=12
Doesn't lend itself to default documents well.
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.