Netscape 8 Breaks IE XML

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has alerted users that Netscape's latest browser appears to break the XML rendering capabilities in Microsoft Internet Explorer. Dave Massy, a senior programme manager for IE, warned users in a blog posting that after installing Netscape 8, IE will render XML files as a blank page, including XML files that have an XSLT transformation. What a week for Netscape 8.0; first the browser needed several fixes hours after its release, then it was discovered that without IE installed, Netscape 8.0 will not install, and now IE needs Netscape uninstalled to work."

Re:Does anyone use it?

[LegendOfLink]

I personally don't, but there's a good article on Internet Week about it.

http://www.internetweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?arti cleID=163106005 [internetweek.com]

I'm going to be biased and stick with my Firefox for now.

How stupid can you be?

[Anonymous Coward]

" then it was discovered that without IE installed, Netscape 8.0 will not install,"

WELL DUH. This is the Netscape with both Gecko and IE rendering engines. It needs both, but can only deliver Gecko they can't redistribute IE component so it has to come with the OS.

DUH! Why is this such a huge discovery?

Re:Does anyone use it?

[Will2k_is_here]

I work the helpdesk part time at my University.

Users have used Netscape since NS 4 days. They don't feel comfortable trying anything else. NS7.2 tells them they have an outdated browser so they just upgrade. That's why they download it.

Re:Does anyone use it?

[jeff_schiller]

http://www.mcomi.com/EN/17/technologies/softdev.ht ml [mcomi.com] "Netscape had used Mercurial for a smaller project in the past, and based on that positive experience, chose them as a development partner for the Netscape 8.0 browser release. They did an excellent job, working under short deadlines and with complex requirements. Mercurial was a source of product innovation, as well as an excellent development shop. As a result of this experience, a number of other divisions of AOL are contracting with Mercurial for further work." Jeremy Liew, GM, Netscape.com (a division of AOL)

I guess Jeremy is now thinking "where's that Backspace button?"

just some info...

[Run4yourlives]

the New netscape is owned by AOL, and really has nothign to do with Mozilla... that connection has long ago been severed.

I lot of folk in this thread seem not to realize that.

Re:crap

[AnonymousJackass]

From TF Blog:

"We currently have the following work around for people that are hitting this issue:
1. Uninstall Netscape 8
2. START->RUN
i. Type: regedit
ii. Hit ENTER
iii. Navigate to the following:
iv. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Plugins\Extension
v. Highlight and right-click the node titled "xml" and select delete.
vi. Restart Internet Explorer

{roman numerals my own}

Re:Does anyone use it?

[httpdotcom]

If you develop web sites, NS8 has a nice feature of switching between Firefox/IE rendering engines with just a mouseclick. So you don't have to ever run IE. This was a big selling point in my book (ps. I use Firefox for everything and anything...if it made toast, I'd do that too!)

Re:Does anyone use it?

[Tophe]

I've heard that uninstalling NS8 won't fix the XML problem because the uninstall doesn't fix the registry changes made. You'll need to do a system restore to before the installation or after uninstalling NS8, deleting the following registry entry will resolve the problem: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Plugins\Extension\.xml

Re:Windows without IE

[Arker]

I almost didn't reply, since so many others have, but scanning them I realised none of them have actually posted the right answer.

Yes, you can 'uninstall' IE but, that doesn't actually remove the core of the POS, just some of the outer fluff.

To actually get rid of it completely, you have to get 98lite, and install from scratch using 98lite. This way, you can actually avoid installing the IE components in the first place. This is the only way to the best of my knowledge to ever get a clean windows install.

If you ever install IE, you have to format and do a reinstall from scratch to get rid of it again.

Of course, a clean install does mean that a lot of very poorly written programs won't run, but in the grand scheme of things, that's an advantage.

Re:Smells like hypocrisy!

[Ersatz Chickenweed]

That's right; WMP contains a search-and-destroy component that disables unapproved AV apps

Kinda reminds me of back in the day, when I was a lowly tech-support person at a small, "national" ISP (we used UUnet's POPs)...

We used to routinely--and by routinely, I mean that they constituted at least 75% of our calls--get a lot of people calling in with the same problem: they could dial into AOL just fine, but their computer couldn't successfully negotiate a connection with our (UUnet's) modems. It would just break down during the handshaking process and give one of several predictable errors.

Well, it turns out that whatever AOL was using in their specialized dial-up adapter broke the standard windows dial-up adapter. As soon as you nuked and reloaded the standard MS-provided Dial-Up Adapter from the Windows CD (a process I could still do in my sleep to this day, I've done it so many hundreds of times), those people could connect to our (UUnet's) POPs just fine. But guess what: if those people EVER dialed back into AOL--even if they just attempted to dial and then aborted the process--it would immediately re-break the standard MS-provided dial-up adapter and they'd soon be back on the phone with our tech support people.

Now fast forward to today, and who owns Netscape? Oh, that's right... it's AOL, so I guess this is just a more modern interpretation of their same old slimy tactics. What scumbags and/or incompetents they are.

Erm... really?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I have a number of friends who are working on high-quality audio and video apps. One of their ongoing problems is that, when installed on Windows, they tend to break.

Yeah, that can happen if you don't know how to program for Windows. Funnily enough, it doesn't much seem to happen to people who do, though. Which apps were these, again?

Personally, I've tried several of the usual suspects, including several versions of the dreaded WMP and RealPlayer. The closest they've got to fighting is associating file extensions with themselves rather than another app when they're installed and/or run. They're all pretty well-behaved in this regard now, and AFAIK the current versions of all the major packages at least prompt the user before changing these.

What specific problems did your friends' applications encounter?

Re:Does anyone use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly is the modified "common" dependancy (file?) that makes them incompatible?

It's not a common dependency. Netscape registers itself (or part of itself) as an XML rendering plugin for IE. It's not so much that IE ceases to work, it's that the XML content is passed to Netscape's 'plugin' which fails to do the job correctly.

Re:Does anyone use it?

[periol]

it only uses the IE rendering engine on pages that require the IE engine. otherwise it uses the firefox rendering engine. those settings are configurable as well.