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Netscape The Internet

Netscape 6.1 530

Posted by michael from the netscape's-still-around? dept.
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.
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Netscape 6.1 More

Netscape 6.1

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  • ... based on the Mozilla.org open-source development effort, ..

    I have submitted bug reports for Mozilla and besides the obvious hanger-ons it's very clear that all of Mozilla's developers work for Netscape. Mozilla is not an Open-Source project like everyone's been preaching. Sure people have submitted their own little gizmo to add but thankfully the've abandoned all that crap and are getting down to the metal now. The Open-Sourcing of Netscape was a failure and it's time we fess up and wrote it off as a necessary experiment.

    Don't bash Netscape because you'll be bashing Mozilla in the process. The're one and the same.

  • I have RH 7.1. Untarred the install file. It ran and downloaded everything. When it was done ... segfault!

    If I run the installer again, it does apparently find the files that were downloaded, but segfaults without installing them.

    Did that happen to anyone else? Workarounds?

  • notoriously buggy? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by byoung ( 2340 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @06:02PM (#2121011)
    No "editorial bias" here:

    AOL Time Warner released the first final upgrade to its notoriously buggy Netscape 6 browser, promising a smoother and faster ride for Netscape loyalists.

    netscape loyalists?

    Are they trying to position Netscape users as a bunch of militia members or something? Wait'll we see Rosie attacking Tom Sellick saying we have no right to keep using Netscape.

    Beautiful example of objective reporting there.

    • Paul Festa -- not MSNBC (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tswinzig ( 210999 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @06:17PM (#2150706) Journal
      No "editorial bias" here

      Note that the article was written by Paul Festa of CNET News.com. As soon as I read that article yesterday on CNET (about the upcoming release, with the same wording), I sent him a letter and CC'd Jai Singh (Editor-in-Chief) about it.

      Paul Festa has been, throughout the browser wars, firmly on the side of Microsoft. At least, that's the opinion you tend to get after reading his articles.

      He also has no memory of history. Here is an excerpt from my letter to him:



      Paul writes, "Whether Netscape 6.1 can rally the Netscape faithful remains to be seen. While Netscape 6 encountered first delays and then scathing reviews, Microsoft assembled an overwhelming lead in the browser market."

      You know Paul, that sounds strangely familiar. Those that forget history are "doomed" to repeat it. To add a little integrity to your article, you might also point out that the same was true in reverse when Microsoft started out with MSIE: Their first versions received scathing reviews (was usually LAUGHED at), while Netscape
      assembled an overwhelming lead in the browser market.


      Let CNET know you don't like his biased reporting by emailing their editors [cnet.com].

      And just so you don't think I'm some crazy, "Netscape loyalist," I actually use MSIE throughout the day and like it.

      • Re:Paul Festa -- not MSNBC (Score:4, Interesting)

        by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @07:08PM (#2133895)
        Paul Festa has to be one of the most misinformed, biased reporters I have ever read.

        I've seen numerous pieces he's written about Mozilla or Netscape where the facts have been grossly distorted and crucial details have been omitted or the wrong emphasis has been place. And all of this with large amounts of negative spin and sometimes even going as far as to accuse AOL of some major conspiracy or other.

        Personally I think he's been slighted by Netscape in the dim and distant past and now he has an axe to grind. Certainly it's not about browsers because I get the distinct impression he would print the same mulch even if Mozilla was by far and away the better browser.

    • Well, they do kinda have a point, especially if you buy into the "browser wars" buzzword. By this point, if you're on a Windows box -- which most people are, especially those who read MSNBC for their "news" -- the odds are that you're using IE. I use a Windows box, and, honestly, I like IE... and I was one of the most die-hard against it, until it went to version 5.0 (SP1) while Netscape was still wasting away in version 4.x.

      The point that he's trying to make is that by now, unless you have a major grudge against M$ (not that anyone on /. has such a thing) or have a Linux box (same difference? ;-)you've probably caved and gone with IE now. So loyalists are all that are left.
      • I don't want that IE piece of *** on my Windows system (Win95). When it was installed, things slowed to a crawl. When I removed it, they sped up again. Mozilla may take awhile to start (since I don't compare it against IE, I don't know. Seems pretty quick to me.), but it never did that to me.

        I don't mind paying for a browser while I'm using it. But to take that kind of a performance hit all the time is really ... well, it just seems stupid to me. I don't upgrade fast enough to be able to pay that kind of price.
      • 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).

        • Re:notoriously buggy? (Score:4, Informative)

          by Gleef ( 86 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @09:18PM (#2169181) Homepage
          The Dev asks:

          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.
  • Mozilla is still not production? Why would Netscape release their product when Mozilla hasn't released there? Is this just to cover up the SCREWUP with Netscape 6.0(1)? Will there be a 6.2 when Mozilla reaches 1.0?

  • Netscape 6.1 = (Mozilla 0.9.3 + branding) (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BroadbandBradley ( 237267 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @06:13PM (#2123193) Homepage
    Branding = AOL/Netscape inspired bookmarks and messenger.
    add the AOL messenger in the sidebar, and a dictionary.
    oh, and don't forget the product registration and mynetscape account setup. You can bypass the registration, but the myNetscape portal is a nice addition to the browser if only to backup bookmarks and adress book.

  • Please cite authorship correctly (Score:5, Informative)

    by Jeremy Erwin ( 2054 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @06:47PM (#2126859) Journal
    This is not a MSNBC story. It's a CNET authored story-- the original of which is here. [cnet.com] It is inaccurate and short sighted to continue to give credit to a Microsoft owned network, but even more so in this particular case, where a conflict of interest might reasonably be suspected.

  • great features, too late (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fetta ( 141344 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @06:00PM (#2130073)
    If Microsoft had ever released IE for Linux, this would be even more of a dead issue.

    A valuable lesson here - it doesn't matter how good the technology is if you take too long to produce it and don't market it well. (of course, that same principle could be applied to almost any product.)

    • It also doesn't matter how BAD a technology, as long as you don't take too long to produce it, and don't market it.

      Look at everything MS does... including the luke-warm reponse to Win2k...
    • Most Unix users still use Netscape, since IE simply doesn't exist and the alternatives are either still in development or not free, or simply out of habit without one established de-facto standard alternative.

      So for Unix users I don't get why it would be too late. Yes it is late and it would have been nice to have a more decent browser earlier, but that doesn't change the fact that finally there is a browser (NS6 or Mozilla) poised to become the de-facto standard browser for UNIX.

    • IE Already exists for Solaris, in fact I'm running it right now on my Sun Ultra5... Which means Linux is probably around the corner. Whats a better way to compete with Linux than to create products for it? Futher pentrating the market.. Sigh..
      • not likely.

        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.
  • with a list and display of images, this browser has cool stuff in it.

  • C|Net has a review of 6.1 up (Score:3, Informative)

    by caferace ( 442 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @06:53PM (#2149314) Homepage
    "...the only compelling reason to switch remains the same: Netscape isn't from Microsoft."

    Whatever...

    Review: here [cnet.com]

  • Just out of curiosity (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Swaffs ( 470184 )
    Does anyone know what build of Mozilla this is based on?

  • Brilliant lead writing... (Score:5, Funny)

    by wrinkledshirt ( 228541 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @06:07PM (#2149888) Homepage
    AOL Time Warner released the first final upgrade...

    If it's the first one, doesn't that preclude the possibility of it being the final one?

    I'm so confused.

    • That line was probably suggested by Clippy, seeing as how it's MSNBC.

      "I see you are writing an article about a product that is not made by Microsoft. Would you like some help in creating confusing^W^W^W^W^W^W^Wcompound/complex-sounding sentences to cloud^W^W^W^W^Wclarify the issues involved with this incident?"
  • AOL releases new Netscape beta
    Final upgrade to buggy version 6

    The release isn't a beta. The article itself mentions that the beta came out in June. Strange that MSNBC would miss a tiny detail like that. :)

  • Cool, but... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Carlos Laviola ( 127699 ) <carlos.laviola@g ... .com minus berry> on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @05:57PM (#2150333) Homepage Journal
    Well, alright, Netscape 6.1 has been released. Isn't it much more worthy to keep tracking Mozilla's nightly builds though? I'd rather use it, since Netscape is based on it, and it's code is open, after all.
    • Over a year ago Mozilla was supposed to be put under a dual GPL/NPL licensing scheme. To date absolutely nothing has been done about it. I'm rather amazed that the KDE people recieved such a thorough lashing over the licensing issues with Qt, while Mozilla has been allowed to scamper along for over a year without as much as a whimper.

      I'm often amazed when I hear people talking about Mozilla and it's GPL nature. Mozilla is not GPL at all. If it were, Galeon could include the Gecko rendering engine without having to carry along the whole freaking Mozilla project.

      I like Mozilla; I think it's a valiant effort, but if the reason you're chosing to use it is because it's "Free" ... well, I think you might be in for a rude awakening.

      • a few corrections.

        Sometime less than a year ago mozilla.org announced intentions to (begin) work toward a dual licensing scheme with the _MPL_ (not NPL) and the GPL or LGPL. This is not as easy as flipping a switch and saying "done." It will require contacting the hundreds of developers that have checked in millions of lines of code in thousands of files and getting agreement. More than "absolutely nothing" has been done about it. The list of contributors is being constructed. The research and discussions about the options available (dual with GPL or LGPL or modifications to MPL) is happening. Big projects don't happen overnight.

        Where do you hear these "people talking about Mozilla and it's GPL nature"? I hear people talking about it and it's MPL nature. You're right when you say "Mozilla is not GPL at all". It isn't. It's MPL and NPL.

        If you don't consider Mozilla free then you have a fundamental disagreement with stallman and the fsf who say the MPL is a free software license (GPL incompatable but free).

        http://www.fsf.org/licenses/license-list.html#So ft wareLicenses

        --Asa

  • Freudian slip? (Score:5, Funny)

    by sheetsda ( 230887 ) <doug...sheets@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @05:58PM (#2150411)
    25MByte junk of code

    Doesn't he mean "chunk" of code? Little Freudian slip there? :)

  • Why people use Netscape instead of IE or Mozilla (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @07:07PM (#2150903)
    First off, let me just say that while "Netscape loyalists" may not be all that much of a misnomer, "computer geeks" aren't the only bunch of people still using Netscape. A big group of people who still use it are those who aren't all that computer literate and wish to continue using Netscape because it's what they started with and what they know. The same reasons why my mother still uses Eudora Lite (or whatever they're calling themselves now) since WFW 3.11 instead of Outlook Express. There are also a lot of corporations that use this kind of mentality when deciding on software. "Netscape still works for us, why bother changing software?"

    As for the "Why Netscape instead of Mozilla?" group, there are advantages to using a mildly invasive, "shrink-wrapped" piece of software. The fact that it's official Netscape means that customers have a single and (usually) definative source of help and information in the form of Netscape themselves. While Mozilla has Bugzilla and on-line forums, that's not all that appealing to those who view themselves more as "casual computer users" than "participants in the community." And again, this is something the corporate types prefer.

    So before you jump down Netscape's throat for releasing this, remember that not everybody is a Free software junkie. Personally, I wish they released this update sooner, and I think it will be interesting to see how Mozilla vs. Netscape works out. This could be the definative closed-source vs. open-source competition, with about as even a playing field between the two as you're going to get.

  • AOL/Netscape had to release v6.1 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by abischof ( 255 ) <alexNO@SPAMspamcop.net> on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @07:34PM (#2168905) Homepage
    In a way, AOL/Netscape had to release v6.1 Right Now (TM), since IE 6 is going to be released next Wednesday [theregister.co.uk] This isn't to say that I don't like Netscape, though -- I download the Mozilla daily builds [mozilla.org] every day..

  • New Theme! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TheFrood ( 163934 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @08:01PM (#2168993) Homepage Journal
    Netscape has released a new Toy Factory theme [netscape.com] for Netscape 6.1. Big bright buttons!

    TheFrood

  • I thought they said they were done with browsers? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mustang Matt ( 133426 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @08:57PM (#2169132)
    Didn't they have a press release about two months ago that said they weren't going to release any more browsers?

    Web developers rejoiced across the world on that day.

    • Yeah, no more pesky end-table HTML tags...

      we can finally kiss JAVA good bye.. everything will be VBScript!
      W3C can finally disband... If people are only writing to the browser, then there's no need for a standard.

      They say there's no Netscape Loyalists.. Bullsh*t! IE renders nicely. I'll give it that, but it's everything ELSE that SUCKS, and that's why I can't STAND to use it!
      • I make sure my pages run in Opera 5.12, IE5+, and Konquerer.

        I know IE is loose with html decoding, but I am strict when writing it.

        There are certain things that are broke in the new Netscape.

        Don't believe me? Load up www.Bridge.com in Netscape 4.72, no problems... Load it up in 6+... Oops!

        We spent a whole lot of manpower trying to keep it compatible with 4 to 4.72 and every single freaking release changed the specs and things broke. Granted we were taxing dhtml to the maximum capability it still should have worked fine and it does in NS4.72 and IE4+. Opera still has some problems but I'm working with their developers on fixing them.

  • Good, hopefully R.I.P. Netscape 4 really soon (Score:3, Insightful)

    by brocktune ( 512373 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @09:06PM (#2169150) Homepage
    I write web-based intranet applications. The sooner Nutscrape 4 dies, the better. Its proprietary DOM and weak CSS support cause me to write and test all my stuff twice. I had high hopes for Netscape 6.0, but its performance on Windows is abysmal. If Netscape 6.1 performance is close to the latest Mozilla, it will be a lot easier to convince people to dump NS4. None of the IS departments of our customers would ever allow Mozilla or Opera. For the few brave souls willing to venture away from IE, it's Netscape or nothing. A robust mainstream browser on Windows other than IE goes a long way towards keeping browsers standards-compliant. Yes, I realize Gecko is the same on NS and Mozilla, but try telling that to Fortune 100 companies. I'm looking forward to the day when I can write DHTML for one browser and it works everywhere.

  • Congratulations CNET (Score:3, Informative)

    by icqqm ( 132707 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @09:53PM (#2169270) Homepage Journal
    An entire article on Netscape 6.1, including references to bugfixing and other elements related to its creation, and the word "Mozilla" doesn't appear ANYWHERE in the article.

    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)

    by shaji ( 32462 ) <nvshaji@@@yahoo...com> on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @10:41PM (#2169380) Journal

    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]

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