Netscape 6.1 530
max2010 writes: "Netscape Browser Version 6.1 is released.
Give it a try, grab the 25MByte junk of code for MAC, Unix and Windows at ftp.netscape.com." MSNBC has a brief story about the release.
Factorials were someone's attempt to make math LOOK exciting.
Nightly builds expire. Milestones don't. (Score:2, Informative)
The java plugin that comes with Netscape 6.1 ... (Score:2, Informative)
Now java applets work better than ever in Netscape...
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Damn icons (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Please cite authorship correctly (Score:5, Informative)
Re:spell checker? (Score:2, Informative)
See this bug [mozilla.org] for information on work to get aspell in Mozilla.
Re:I dove in, and found the pool empty. (Score:1, Informative)
Having crash doing simple operations probably means problems with your hardware or drivers. I would first try updating the video driver, because web browsers, as simple as they may seem, are pretty demanding on a good video card. And also make sure you have enough RAM to run it. If you're running win98 on a 64MB machine, with IE (bloat and pre-loaded), winamp, icq2000 (which takes 11MB!!), etc., all running in the background, then you're pushing it too hard.
I've been runing NS6.1 on win2k since it was "unofficially released" a few days ago, and so far no single crashes yet. You should definitely check your system configuration, even if NS6.1 is the only app that malfunctions.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
6.1 is better than 6.0 in all respects, especially performance. Mozilla has seen amazing performance increases since the branch NS6 was forked from. It's still got some improvements to go yet, but 6.1 (Mozilla 0.9.x) is actually usable, as opposed to 6.0.
Yes, it's true. Netscape6/Mozilla will never be as fast as NS4 (at least as far as the UI goes). For better or for worse, Mozilla really is a platform, and along with it you get all of the overhead. But not only is that overhead seeing plenty of profiling and optimization, but keep in mind processor speed has at least doubled since the project began. And processor speed continues to increase. So while Mozilla will never be as fast as NS4, there will come a time when the performance difference will be statistical noise, and no one will care. Yes, we all want a competitor to IE that can beat it in performance now, but I like to think of Mozilla as the "browser of the future."
Is there any actual feature advantage to Mozilla/Netscape6.x over Netscape 4.78?
I don't know if you deliver web content or not, but the big thing is that Mozilla/NS6 implements the W3C recommended standards like CSS1/2 and DOM. If you're just a normal user, this may not impress you so much, but believe me, this is very significant. The sooner we can bury Netscape4, the sooner content deliverers can start to develop using CSS, and truly cross-platform web applications can be built using the DOM. In other words, there may not be an immediate advantage (at least, a big advantage from a user's perspective), but the real benefit is in the web's future.
And what is all the fuss over IE?
Maybe I'll get tarred and feathered for this, but IE really is a good browser. It implements quite a bit of CSS and DOM, and, while it does have its braindead idiosynchrasies (like all browsers), developing IE-compatable content doesn't make me pull my hair out like NS4 does.
Cheers,
Jason.
Re:great features, too late (Score:3, Informative)
IE was out for HPUX and Solaris years ago - and there is still no Linux version. I don't really see MS making anything for Linux. Partially because it would give some validity to the OS, and partially because it runs on the same hardware as Windows - which means if someone no longer had to boot Windows to view a web page or read a doc, there is one less OS sell.
C|Net has a review of 6.1 up (Score:3, Informative)
Whatever...
Review: here [cnet.com]
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Misc Icons (Score:2, Informative)
The free version has a small ad-window, but it isn't too annoying.
Size? If you do not have jde installed, you have to get the larger version (~10M, IIRC), after that updates are small (~2.5M).
Re:Why? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:sweet god in heaven (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
correction, with Mozilla you must wait for the next _nightly_ release. You don't have to wait for a milestone. About avery 12 hours a new build for mac, win32 and linux is made off of the tip of the development trunk. To suggest that updates from Netscape come any faster than updates to Mozilla is plain silly. Even if you were just talking about Milestones, we had about 7 of those between Netscape 6 and 6.1
-Asa
Re:Why? (Score:0, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
Netscape 3 was so fast because it ignored half of the HTML on the page.
</sarcasm>
The main advantage I'd give to Moz 0.9.3 is that it finally seems faster to me than 4.7. I think it still takes a few more seconds to startup, but once started, it is just as fast if not faster than 4.7. Beyond that, it actually renders correctly and (mostly) according to standards. Try bestowing that distinction upon 4.x.
And if you think IE still sucks as bad as it used to (pre-3.0 days), I certainly wonder what you're actually trying it out on. I've used IE extensively for the past couple years and I can't stop laughing at your assumption that it is still as bad. IMHO, IE 5 is the fastest, most feature complete browser available for any operating system. Maybe one day I'll be able to say this about Mozilla instead (and I hope I do!), but I certainly know that I won't ever say that about Netscape 4.x.
No it isn't (Score:4, Informative)
Netscape 6.1 comes from the Mozilla 0.9.2 branch, not the 0.9.3 branch.
Re:Freudian slip? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:notoriously buggy? (Score:4, Informative)
I have detected no editorial bias towards Microsoft at MSNBC, and I think I'd notice, since I'm quite biased *against* Microsoft.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
user_pref("general.useragent.override","(insert user agent string here...)");
2) I have never had any problems with the plugins I use. If a plugin doesn't "recognize" Moz, keep an install of Netscape 4 around and copy the plugin files from Communicator/Program/plugins to Mozilla's plugin directory. Works like a charm for QuickTime at least, and I haven't found any other plugins I have a use for yet...
DennyK
Re:notoriously buggy? (Score:4, Informative)
Um, what exactly don't you like about Netscape 4.x (now 4.78)? It's stable (as least on windows and FreeBSD), fast and a nice integrated mail client (sucky for newsgroups though).
(Note: I am not an IE fan, in fact I use Mozilla as my main browser; also note: most of my Netscape 4.x experience is with the Linux version, your mileage may vary).
Here's a quick, of the top of my head, list of some things I don't like about Netscape 4.x
* Pathetically non-standard CSS implementation
* Annoyingly quirky DOM implementation
* Crashes more than Mozilla 0.9.2 and above (at least for me)
* Mail client can't handle multiple accounts
* Does not properly handle being executed more than once at a time
* Pointless HTML editor that just takes up space
* Awkward rendering; particularly bad handling of fonts and text placement
* Badly chosen or missing keyboard shortcuts
* Occasionally corrupts downloaded binaries
Yes, some of these gripes also carry over to Mozilla (eg integrated HTML editor), but it's already pretty much surpassed 4.x in features (it's missing a few, but has many that 4.x couldn't even think about), and blown way past it in standards compliance and ease to develop for.
IE 5.x is (mostly) more standards compliant than Netscape 4.x, but at the expense of security (on windows) or performance (on unix). It is also, in my experience, far less stable than Netscape 4.x.
I'm looking forward to the day when I can focus my website development on looking good on IE 5.0+, Netscape 6.1+ (6.0 is best forgotten) and Mozilla 1.0+, and dump support for both Netscape and IE's obnoxious 4.x browsers.
Congratulations CNET (Score:3, Informative)
BTW: Most of the past nine months' work has been fixing bugs and improving performance and stability, according to sources close to Netscape.
Is it just me, or can any idiot just look at MozillaZine and figure this out for himself?
Netscape 6.1, a few thoughts (Score:4, Informative)
I just have a few comments regarding netscape 6.1/mozilla.
Standard compliance : Netscape is the most standard complaint browser out there, even the internet explorer 6.0 beta fails to render pages correcly. For example just go to W3 CSS page [w3.org] and compare the pages rendered my mozilla/ns and ie. Note the position of the toolbar as you scroll down the page in both browsers. Also you can choose alternate stylesheets on that site using View->Use Stylesheet
Speed : Performance is comparable to that of IE now.. If you want faster than IE browsers use Galeon or skipstone which are based on mozilla
UI issues : Unfortunately mozilla/ns does not support some features which used to work in NS4.x. Dynamic Font issues bugs 52746 [mozilla.org] Ugly list items ON LINUX 91816 [mozilla.org]
A Grand Experiment indeed (Score:3, Informative)
Your Question 1 is a very difficult one to answer as it demands some supposition as to what would have occurred had they not opened the source. Possibly the dumping of the "Mozilla Classic" codebase was forced somewhat by Open Sourcing. While this has had both negative and positive aspects, ultimatly I think it was a positive thing. We may have had a browser sooner otherwise, but I don't think it'd be a good idea in the long term
Question 2 is much easier to answer. Code. Forgetting the Browser product itself, Mozilla.org has made available Bugzilla and Bonsai. Components such as Network Security Services (which is being leveraged in Ximians Evolution I believe).
As a grand experiment even Mozillas 'mistakes' are valuable as they can be learnt from.
Re:Mozilla question (Score:2, Informative)