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Netscape Communicator 5.0 Delayed

Posted by Roblimo on from the it's-always-something dept.

dougc1 writes "According to this CNET article, Netscape plans to delay release of Communicator 5.0 for two more months." Well, I'm doing okay with 4.7, but it sure would be nice to have a more stable and faster Netscape - someday. (sigh)

3 of 258 comments (clear)

  1. The article author is Anti-Mozilla, simply put. by caferace · · Score: 5
    Paul Festa has yet to write anything positive about Mozilla or Netscape in the past. If one runs a search on the C|Net Website you might find a smattering of relatively neutral articles, but the fact of the matter is that the guy is being paid to downplay the significance of a very cool, soon to be released Alpha base we can all "dogfood" with.

    AND, I guarantee he reads /. But will he respond here? Doubtful. He won't even respond to polite email.

    Feh. Just keep coding and bug fixing. He'll fade into oblivion with the rest of the naysayers.

  2. Re:I'm going to get hated but... I kinda like IE by pb · · Score: 5

    Netscape hasn't really released anything new. I haven't played with the CSS/XML stuff, because I fear my web programming is still stuck in '94 or '95. (I'm glad tables are standardized now. :)

    Microsoft tends to ignore security holes whenever possible. That scares the crap out of me.

    Remember that traitor streak, because most of us have it when it comes to free (beer) software. Heck, that's why I switched to Netscape in the first place, it was far cooler than Mosaic.

    (stupid title bar and background color flashing tricks, the blink tag, and the invention of background pictures aside, allowing inline JPEGs was a beautiful thing, so I forgive them. :) )

    However, when I tried IE... well, it sucked, and it annoyed the crap out of me. But I haven't tried it in a while, and the only new feature I *really* like from it is the fullscreen option. But that's just because Word and PowerPoint annoys the crap out of me more, so I'm happy to write papers and presentations in HTML if I have to.

    (at least web browsers support using JPEG files without converting them to binary bitmap-looking crap and wasting 20 times the disk space, and my text editor doesn't highlight random words because it thinks they look funny, and then try to talk to me about it...)

    Hmm. Interesting FUD.

    I, personally, abandon a company when they break trust. Therefore, on that scale:

    Microsoft & Apple: both bad, by betraying their customers and backstabbing their partners.

    IBM: generally pretty good. Lumbering and clueless, but not really mean, AFAICT.

    RedHat: much better. They flirted with proprietary software until they realized how much it sucked, and now they've done a good job of promoting open source, and not really screwing up (like Caldera did, or now Corel).

    Caldera: I don't trust them, and I never have. They seem to have an axe to grind, and I have a feeling that given the chance, they'd try to be another Microsoft. But, we'll see. I've heard good things about their Linux distribution. (except for the commercial (closed source?) add-ons)

    Corel: Either they mean well, or their strategy coincides with 'ours' briefly. It's great to see them funnelling development into Wine, I can't believe how much it's advanced lately. I just wish I used Windows enough to test it better. :)

    These are, as always, my opinions, and if you have any facts to challenge my assumptions with, present them. I am, especially on this topic, rather interested to hear it.
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail rather than vaguely moderate.

    --
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
  3. Wrong. by mykmelez · · Score: 5

    Mozilla has been planning since the summer to release a public alpha in December, followed by a beta a few months later. In some cases these two releases were called "mozilla beta" and "netscape beta", admittedly a confusing way of describing the releases, and one which was rectified a while ago.

    A few months ago some reporter misunderstood the release schedule and reported Netscape would release a beta in December. Since then this inaccuracy has propagated into all subsequent news articles through the common journalistic practice of re-using previously published work instead of doing original research.

    Now suddenly some reporter discovers what's actually going on, but instead of printing a retraction of earlier stories they say the Netscape beta has been "delayed". It isn't true, and while I expect it from the news sites I've been reading it from for months, I figured Slashdot would be able to figure it out. I guess not.

    Don't believe me? Check it out for yourself:

    The Milestone Chart

    Quoting from the article "[ Fwd: The Plan]" (1999 September 24) in the newsgroup "netscape.public.mozilla.porkjockeys":

    "When: Mozilla beta-milestone 12/15. Netscape beta later, first things first."