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Netscape 4.6 212

Posted by blizzard from the where-did-this-come-from dept.
Netscape 4.6 has silently appeared on the netscape ftp servers. Looks like a bugfix release. D00D! sent us the release notes.
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Netscape 4.6 More

Netscape 4.6

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  • You *can't* get NT4 stable - it's closed source, and thus not possible to fix the bugs. SP4 in particular is lethal - when using 3com cards, the systems all periodically slow to a crawl and blue-screen frequently. We nearly had a major disaster with shipping kit using it half-way round the world, but spotted the problem in time and reverted to SP3. Subsequently, we found out MS have buggered about substantially with the NDIS driver layer in SP4 (see www.ntmagazine.com for details) which probably explains it.

    The point is, no matter how good you are as a sysadmin, you *can't fix NT*. And an "Enterprise OS" that typically can't even handle hot-plugging the *mouse* is just a joke.

  • Mozilla Features (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There are a copy features I have wanted netscape to have for a long time. The first is the ability to print only what you selected with your mouse cursor, instead of being forced to print the whole page. The second is the ability to save a whole page, not just the html, but any graphics displayed as part of that page. I guess IE5 can now do this. Does mozilla support these features? If not, they seriously should. BTW- Has anyone confirmed whether or not there is a g2 player with netscape for linux?

  • Mozilla Features (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There are a copy features I have wanted netscape to have for a long time. The first is the ability to print only what you selected with your mouse cursor, instead of being forced to print the whole page. The second is the ability to save a whole page, not just the html, but any graphics displayed as part of that page. I guess IE5 can now do this. Does mozilla support these features? If not, they seriously should. BTW- Has anyone confirmed whether or not there is a g2 player with netscape for linux?

    Jeff Knox
    (Why does slashdot keep logging me out, and it wont mail me my password)

  • url completion (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm just wondering how others here feel about url completion. I used to disparage the feature in its early stages, since it seemed to distract from typing the proper url by somewhat randomly cycling through available choices. IE5, however, introduced a very interesting improvement -- namely a pull-down list of urls in the user's history. Without forcing a random completion on the user, it serves as a bookmark scratchbook of sorts, which I've found extremely convenient for getting back longish urls with, let's say, perl or ColdFusion parameters. Convenient to bypass annoying, graphics-laden front pages on some sites.

    Anyway, I remember a discussion on slashdot around the time either a 4.0x or 4.5 was released, with someone saying that url completion was removed on UNIX versions of Netscape because it didn't fit the 'user mentality.' Anyone has any thoughts on this?

    AC

  • Re:Mozilla Features (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Useful features to be sure. I can't comment on whether either is on the feature list. However, with the new emphasis on scriptability in Mozilla, feature two (save entire page) is just a Simple Matter of Programming(TM) [insert winking emoticon here].

    The odd thing I find about 'print selection' on IE5, is that while they have added this feature, they still have no print preview. Puzzling.

    I also note that IE5's implementation of 'save web page' is _evil_. First off, they rewrite (pretty-print) the HTML page that you save, and that is the wrong thing to do (by default).

    However, worse: in doing the re-writing they add a DOCTYPE to the page whether or not the page qualifies for that DTD -- the average user will not know what the DOCTYPE means, and for the most part will adopt it, thus propagating meaningless DOCTYPE around the web -- very evil.

    And, in doing the re-writing, they add:
    |META CONTENT="text/html; charset=windows-1252" HTTP-EQUIV=content-type|

    Pure evil.

  • OPERA IS COMING (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Project magic, a linux-unix port of opera is underway (and has been for what seems like ages). If it has Java support, it will be a netscape killer.
  • What's wrong with WordPerfect? I use WordPerfect 8 patched to SP5 AND Word '97 from the Office '97 suite. I have to use both due to the fact that they refuse to understand each other's formats (well, the Office '97 one refuses and the WordPerfect one has not sufficiently reverse engineered the Word fformat properly yet :)). I started out on Word and used that for about two years preparing small memos and large documents. When I first used WordPerfect, I hated it. Now, I only touch Word when I have to ( reading in a Word file and changing it). Preparing formatted documents in WordPerfect is a dream compared to the nightmare and manual labour of Word. In my opinion, WordPerfect is a wordprocessor while Word is the big-daddy of wordpad and a wordprocessor wannabe. On stability, WordPerfect has yet to crash on me while Word has to be handled gently. BTW, I am talking about the win32 versions. WordPerfect for linux needs some serious attention before I would use it as my main tool. On that topic, I really wish the X ppl would sort out their font rendering. Scalable fonts should not be THAT jaggified. Just my 0.000002c ;)

  • Re:128 bit version? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Use Fortify [fortify.net]. Netscape doesn't seem to have any glibc versions of its 128 browsers out anyway, so those with glibc systems are stuck with either 40 bits or Fortify if they want a relatively stable browser.


    Then again, don't take my word, I haven't downloaded a copy since 4.51 came out.


    AC

  • Re:Mozilla! (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 14, 1999 @05:51PM (#1891606)

    This is the main reson that I think Linus should just ignore MS/Mindcraft for the time being.
    Excellent point!
    Pardon my ignorance, but I can't see what's so difficult about writing a browser. It's basically a TCP/IP client with an HTML parser and an image renderer. What's the hard part that takes so long?
    There's a classic design rule-of-thumb: "Be strict in sending and tolerant in receiving". The problem (to some degree) is that the 'strict in sending' part of the bargain has been dropped on the floor by various WYSIWYG HTML editors, and well-intentioned authors. Given user expectations, this forces a parser/layout engine to be extremely (even perversely) tolerant. Hence, not as easy as it seems.

    It's those pesky users. If nobody used the product, then nobody would expect it to work ;).

  • xzoom (Score:1)

    by Yarn ( 75 )
    that program rocks.

    Also, if you get really bored you can get nifty hall of mirrors effects with it.
  • They already have a player. Wait about a month for the public beta of G2 for Linux.

  • My few cents, running on Linux, libc5:

    Bozos still haven't got the graphics right under monochrome X. They're negative, so, for example, pictures of Tux show him with a black tummy and white wings. Every other X app I've got exhibits the proper behavior in this regard.

    Two binaries with standalone? Looks like it: netscape and netscape-dynMotif. The latter won't run on my (Motifless) system, so I've bzip2'd it to save space. If everything's still working in a week, I'll rm the thing.

    Speaking of space: with netscape-dynMotif compressed, df is showing that my Navigator standalone installation is taking up about 15 000 blocks.

  • Sorry, check your sources again...

    There WILL be soon a G2 Player for All Linux/Unix variants.. (but sadly, no G2 Plus version)

    Hetz

  • It (4.6) does seem to have fixed the extremely broken dropdown menus on forms. Selecting an option from a dropdown no longer prevents subsequent text box input -- that alone was worth the price I paid -- oops, it was free, wasn't it (gratuitous barb at people who gripe about the quality of software for which they are expected to pay only the time required to download and install it). 'twould have been nice if they'd have included that nice little tidbit of information.

  • Netscape 4.6 Release Notes (Score:3)

    by davie ( 191 ) on Friday May 14, 1999 @01:23PM (#1891612) Journal

    For anyone wondering what's changed in NS 4.6:

    http://home.netscap e.com/eng/mozilla/4.6/relnotes/unix-4.6.html [netscape.com]

    For what it's worth, it does seem to render a little faster, but then I'm an impressionable litte sprite.

  • whatever you don't, don't go and write one. Instead put AC posts on various web sites, whine, moan, etc. That'll get something done. Yeah...
  • ... until it decides to overly autocomplete a site. Like typing "slash" then it fills in the dot.org/comments.pl?sid=... So I continue typing to the .org, then hit delete to remove everything after the /. Then if I don't hit return withing 1 second, it re-completes the whole freakin URL deep into comments. Personally, I have no problem just typing "slashdot.org" and being done with it. I know where I'm going, and how to type it ;).

    If it were added, I'd allow it if it was shutoff-able in preferences...
  • Two things for y'all..

    I get the most crashes (well, hangs actually) when I have Java enabled. I have decided that having little scrolling news items and whatnot aren't worth it, so I disale that..

    Also, make sure you are running the correct version for your distribution of Linux! The libc5 version probably won't work very well on a glibc2 system, and vice-versa. You have to go get the 'unsupported' Linux 2.0 version..
  • Good God, I'd get a headache in 5 minutes at such a low refresh rate.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad

  • makes me laugh... sites that set their sites up for 640x480 screens.. then running them in 1280x1024 or so...

    What makes me laugh is people who seem to WANT their eye to travel 16" back and forth across a screen while reading. Until most people have 19" monitors, please keep your browser windows at about 800x600, unless you find sites that are broken at displaying text, such as the new DejaNews.

  • My little gold mine (OK, it helps that I'm the lead QA engineer for all the download stuff here...)

    Netscape Product Archive [netscape.com]

    We keep *almost* everything available.

    I want to die peacefully in my sleep as my grandfather did...

  • Actually, there are 128 bit versions for all platforms. It just takes a few days to wire these into the secure servers (as I'm heading off to QA these in a few minutes). Wise slashdotters in the past have found them prior to general announcement. Think of it as a treasure hunt, it ain't that hard.

    FWIW, if you poke around you might notice that the "export" version is no longer 40 bit encryption.

    It's now 56bit...

    I want to die peacefully in my sleep as my grandfather did...

  • Posted by Fleeno:

    As a proud Maytag shareholder, I resent seeing "Hoover" and "Microsoft" in the same .sig! ;)
  • Posted by Fleeno:

    I just noticed the spell check button is not available when composing a message. Did I mess something up, or did they change this?
  • Posted by The Incredible Mr. Limpett:

    What I want is a graphical browser that has java capabilities, can do frames and secure transactions. That's all. fast and furious.

    No spell checking, no email, no newsreader, no html editor, no graphics editor, no auto complete. Does anyone make this?!?!?!?

    Why do they just keep getting bigger and slower? Is it that hard to program a small FAST browser?? without all that intgerated crap?

    I've tried Opera, Lynx (too hard to find text only web pages anymore), netscape, explorer...are there any others out there for Windows/Mac/Linux that fits this bill?


    ----
    "Wars, conflict, it's all business. One murder makes a
    villain. Millions a hero. Numbers sanctify."
  • Or is it because Mozilla isn't even beta yet? Also, Mozilla's UI is/will be customizable. So if you don't like the way it looks, change it.
  • I had G2 running once under WINE a while ago. Full Screen mode crashed X but the video played nice most of the time.
  • Sick and tired of my browser choking on some JS and killing my email. Notice that this is not a problem with MS products.

    My Solution: I create a 2nd account just for browsing. That way when my browser crashes it does not interfere with the messenger email client.

    I started using kmail (version 1.0.17 is stabe enough to use) so that when Netscape crashes it doesn't trash my email. I also wrote a shell script that cleans things up after a crash to make things easier.

    You're right about MS -- credit where credit is due, IE is a better browser. It has some annoying features, but at least it works.

    TedC

  • Re:Mozilla! (Score:3)

    by TedC ( 967 ) on Friday May 14, 1999 @03:06PM (#1891627)
    And on this front, I would say that Mozilla SeaMonkey is currently our best (and maybe our only) hope of getting a better browser for Linux.

    It sounds like they're doing it right, which is a good thing. Netscape got so caught up in competing with MS that their product suffered. This is the main reson that I think Linus should just ignore MS/Mindcraft for the time being.

    Pardon my ignorance, but I can't see what's so difficult about writing a browser. It's basically a TCP/IP client with an HTML parser and an image renderer. What's the hard part that takes so long? I know the people working on it are all good programmers, so there must be some hidden "tarpit" that I don't know about.

    TedC

  • Do this. (Score:4)

    by Groucho ( 1038 ) on Friday May 14, 1999 @03:56PM (#1891628)
    Add this to your .bash_profile

    MOZILLA_NO_ASYNC_DNS=True
    export MOZILLA_NO_ASYNC_DNS

    More info in the readme in /usr/doc/netscape-common-4.xx, also with instructions for tcsh etc.

    This stops the dns helper from starting. When I did it, Netscape got a LOT faster at dns lookups. Now I guess it just uses the nameservers I specified in /etc/resolv.conf, which is kinda what I wanted in the first place. :-)

    If you still think Netscape sucks, try the latest KFM which is not too shabby and renders pages very quickly. Look at Freshmeat on Netscape then try it with KFM. All those bloody tables render faster in KFM. Gawd, I can't wait for Mozilla. :-)

    Groucho
  • It took out features I use, so I'm still using 3 . . . But then, the only reason I don't use lynx all the time is that it can't launch extra browser windows . . .

  • new browser... (Score:3)

    by smash ( 1351 ) on Friday May 14, 1999 @12:38PM (#1891630) Homepage Journal
    heh...

    what we need is browser makers to stop trying to make HTML do exactly the same stuff as you can do with DTP programs (ie get pixel perfect layout control).

    HTML isnt meant to look exactly the same on every computer. it is meant to lay content out in the best way for your system.

    makes me laugh... sites that set their sites up for 640x480 screens.. then running them in 1280x1024 or so...

    smash

  • With all due respect to the programmers at Netscape, the Communicator code just isn't worth it. It needs to eventually die away. That's why mozilla has been designed from the ground up.

    The early code for communicator 5 was what was first released so some of the code from version 4 should be there. It's still downloadable as 'classic Mozilla'. I believe it had the configurable chrome too. But it was than replaced with the current incarnation of Mozilla and the chrome had to be built into it again.

    Anyway, everything seems to be heading in the right direction. Outside development is starting to pick up in addition to the steady development going that's going on. For example, a new project has been started to add MathML to mozilla. Cool! We just might get MathML, finally.

    narbey
  • A couple weeks ago just for kicks I downloaded Netscape 2.0x. WOW. It was so fast. Unfortunately, /. and freshmeat rendered horribly. So I tried 3.04 and have been using it ever since. Some pages don't render completely right, but I am more than happy with the speed and memory usage improvements that I've gotten.
  • Netscape's "Latest Browser Software" download "wizard" does not list 4.6, therefore I assume there is not / will not be a 128 bit version?
  • For the first time, I've got a stable version of mozilla. I'm running the libc5 version on my glibc2.1 version, and magically, it loads faster, renders quicker, and has generally not crashed even once in the last 24 hours. The mem usage seems a little down.
    Yes, I wish a mozilla beta was out, but this is finally usable, and I don't have to use that ugly
    kfm browser, which fills my home directory with junk, and can't handle cookies properly.
  • Nt is stable, it's my fault it crashes.
    Nt is stable, it's my fault it crashes.
    Nt is stable, it's my fault it crashes.
    Nt is stable, it's my fault it crashes.
    Nt is stable, it's my fault it crashes.
    Nt is stable, it's my fault it crashes.
    (I'm starting to believe it...)
    Nt is stable, it's my fault it crashes.
    Nt is stable, it's my fault it crashes.
  • If you have a Redhat 5.x system, or another Linux distribution that has glibc, use that version!

    the glibc2 version will be much more stable on these systems than the libc5 version.

    I'm not sure why it's still in the unsupported section - it works better than the libc5 version.
  • First of all, Netscape has contractual (customer) obligations to continue to fix bugs in the 4.x series, so Netscape will continue to put out new 4.x releases on a regular basis with more and more bugfixes. Secondly, the team that works on 4.x is a TOTALLY different team than the Mozilla/5.0 team. The Mozilla team is NOT distracted by 4.x work.
  • No - not in 4.6, MAYBE 4.7. And yes, that's an official response :) - I worked on 4.5 and currently work on 5.0
  • Uhhm. Here it does run faster.
  • As well as JWZ who said he thought that it was a mistake working on 4.5 rather than putting all their efforts into Mozilla 5.0 one of the developers who still works on Mozilla said the same see http://www.mozilla.org/mozilla-at-one.html

    As soon as they switched to Mozilla they should have made all future releases of their product based on their open source work. When Netscape are trying to make a success of their open source efforts it makes no sense to plough all their money into a closed source effort.

    And to add to your point about Linux. There are a lot more developers in the Linux community than Mozilla have got and all Linux kernels are open source so work on the 2.3 series can get integrated in the 2.2 series if the feature is too important to wait until 2.4

    Put it this way: no one (well not many people) complain about Linux having both a stable and development kernel but even the Mozilla developers consider it a bad idea wasting their time on 4.x as the layout engine used in this browser is going to be replaced with NGlayout (Gecko) with the Mozilla release anyway.
    --
  • What I mean is they should just give up on 4.x and concentrate on Mozilla as nothing from 4.x is in Mozilla (Mozilla has a new layout engine, new front end, new everything). So NO I don't want new features in 4.x but they shouldn't up the version numbers to 4.6 to make it look like it has new features either. 4.52 is what it should be called.

    Now please Netscape give up on 4.x before everyone starts looking elsewhere for their browsers.
    --
  • It wasn't my intention to misrepresent what he had said. I just agree with that particular argument and that is how I interpreted what he had written. The bit about him being a developer was just an assumption.
    --

  • What are Netscape doing? (Score:3)

    by linuxci ( 3530 ) on Friday May 14, 1999 @03:20PM (#1891643)
    It is considered one of the biggest mistakes of Netscape to have released version 4.5 of their browser instead of concentrating on Mozilla. So what do they do? They release a 4.6 version of their browser. Mozilla has a lot more potential than their current browsers so AOL/Netscape should be concentrating on getting Mozilla usable. Although 4.5 isn't perfect it's OK and is certainly usable (I don't know how people say it crashes every 5 minutes) can they not leave it alone now and put all their efforts into Mozilla and only work on the old browsers if they have to plug a security hole or something as urgent. Mozilla will never get released if they are keeping their developers on the 4.x series.

    Also why 4.6? I can't see anything different to 4.5 so it should have been version 4.52
    --
  • I am running netscape 4.51 and 4.07 (I think) and they are both pretty stable considering how much I use them. Generally I only crash them once a week, if that often, and generally it's something weird about the page.. I'm having a hard time believing you guys are crashing netscape every few minutes. :) Although a couple versions crashed on me whenever I hit a "mailto" link, but they're gone now.

    Ja.
    -Paul
  • I suspect that this is due to those pusbuckets at AOL trying to start dictating things to the NS programers.

    A pathetic attempt at trying to force eveyone to use NS for their email (much like Eudora tried which Eudora Lite not doing UUEncoding but Eudora Pro doing so.

    My recommendation: use a proper email program, instead of a monstrosity that tries to everything at once and fails miserably.

  • You're insanse. The Mozilla binary releases do include all the necessary libraries out of the box.

    The real problem is that there are still two major areas that need fixing in the Unix version before it is usable:

    1. The scrolling performance is utterly horrible, with lots of gray flicker and flashing.

    2. The form widgets using Gtk have major problems. I don't blame them, sometimes it's hard to get Gtk to behave in some way other than its hardcoded defaults, but in any case this needs a lot of work.

    I've heard that neither of these problems exist on the windows version, although I've never seen it first-hand.

    I personally can't wait to dump netscape and use start using mozilla.
  • Opera isn't too bad. I haven't tried Trollio yet, but it looks decent.
  • WordPerfect's not such a bad thing. MSWord conversions on large files could use a bit of work, but the same could be said of MSWord conversions of large WordPerfect files.
  • I've been using messenger for quite some time now, and I'm very pleased with the interface. But recently it has developed a quirk that won't let me access my IMAP folders. Kind of defeats the purpose of using IMAP!

    Anyway, I've been looking for a new mail client. It should handle attachments properly (that means Eudora is out!), should have IMAP4 functionality, and be compatible with PGP. Some clients I've looked at:

    XFMail
    Postilion
    Pine
    Mahogany
    Vienna
    Embla
    Simeon
    Mulberry

    Of these, Mahogany looks really cool, but I can't find the Win32 version! Any comments?
  • Oh cool! They finally have IMAP support! This could definitely be a good thing.
  • It looked impressive at first, but I'm afraid there are too many problems. The IMAP configuration was awkward at best, Pegasus had trouble communicating with my server (kept closing the connection), and it crashed within the first five minutes. Sigh, I will keep looking/trying, though.
  • I found a workaround for that bug... Useing Window Maker just switch to another workspace and text imput works again.
  • Does anyone know if they are planning on releasing a glibc 2.1 release in the unsupported section? I am running the glibc2.0 version but ever since I upgraded to redhat 6.0 (which has glibc-2.1.1) I find that netscape crashes if you try to run java or plugins. It used to work fine with macromedia flash plugin and java enabled, but it seems that the new glibc broke that.

    Jeff Haskovec
  • this I think is more interesting news than a bugfix for Netscape 4.5. People are working on MathML support in mozilla. Join them http://www.mozilla.org/projects/mathml/
  • so there really is a MS tax
  • kfm is a file manager like windows explorer which has a web view. It isn't a serious real-world browser.
  • heh when IE crashes the OS goes down too
  • netscape 4.6 on my linux notebook:
    USER PID %CPU %MEM SIZE RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
    plm 889 5.4 24.5 24172 15572 p4 S 15:52 0:28 /usr/local/netscape/n
    plm 890 0.0 5.5 16416 3540 p4 S 15:52 0:00 (dns helper)

    I am actually running a nameserver myself anyway. How can the (dns helper) process be removed?

    Paul
  • Apparently, real.com has no G2 player for linux yet. Could it be netscape integrated the player into the browser?
  • Thank you! Works fine.

    Paul
  • In the release notes, I see a new feature is the G2 player... I am now running netscape 4.6 but did not figure out what this means. Anyone?
  • Are the two most egregious bugs in previous versions fixed? (For my purposes, nothing but Linux-2.0 + glibc-2.0 are important).
    • css1 -- has not worked stably or reliably in any version of NetScape-4.x. It worked briefly on Navigator-4.6 but mostly gets ignored. Some may say it is dead, as far as I can see, it has simply not worked reliably on *any* Linux browser that is otherwise useful.

      All work on my web site has ceased until I get a browser that will recognize and properly support css1. Then I can use HTML-4.0 for all new pages and gradually convert old pages to HTML-4.0. If it breaks IE, that's fine. If M$ can't or won't implement industry standards that are several years old working, that's their (and their foolish customers') problem, not mine. I, for one, do not care at all about XSL, nor for the moment about XML; and all my pages are and will remain Java-free.

    • Java junk -- Java and JavaScript are inherently insecure on the InterNet. I have no use for sites that insist that I enable one or the other to view it. I will not run any browser that does not let me disable them.

      NetScape-4.5 has disable options, but the JavaScript button, at least, does not work. The ideal browser, for me, would not in any way depend on Java, would use plug-ins for it and simply ignore all Java stuff if the plug-ins were not present.

    "> Buz Cory [mailto] at buzco.ddns.org [ddns.org]
    "> write for FREE help [mailto] with:
    • Installing/Configuring Linux
    • Getting started with the Ada Programming Language.
    Bloated, glacial, crash-prone system got you down? Linux to the Rescue!
    Programmer? Drowned in bugs? Ada is the answer.
  • I've found that the stability seems very dependent on two things: whether you are running Communicator (with mail, news, etc.) or the stripped down Navigator; and whether you insist on allowing for Java and Javascript. Me, I have these turned off by default, and turn either on only when I view a site where I really need it. I sure would wish for some way to dynamically reconfigure Netscape depending on the URL I'm viewing.
  • In FreeBSD, I just restart moused.
  • ...(second only to the M$ range of "products", Exchange, Outf*ck etc.).


    I find that referring to it as OutHouse is a more effective, and an appropriate analogy.
  • I have never understood why they don't make Plus available for Unix/Linux. They will do all the major work to make a free version available, but they won't add the finishing touches (and that really *is* what they are) to make a saleable version. I mentioned the fact that I would be willing to pay for the Plus version and also mentioned winelib in the same email as a way for them to easily sync their Win32/Linux versions and got back a reply asking how much money my origanization (?) would be willing to contribute to the development. Hey, I'm just a home user that would like to be able to pay $29.95 for the detail (but important) additions that make it RealPlayer Plus.

    -Steve Bergman
  • What we need is to seperate the logical markup from the display stuff. We need a browser that understand XSL flow-objects for the display engine, and XSL stylesheets to tranform a logical document into a well-formatted display document.

    And you can be concerned with pixels and at the same time allow the page to stretch when the browser window is stretched. That's what a good display language does.

  • what we need is browser makers to stop trying to make HTML do exactly the same stuff as you can do with DTP programs (ie get pixel perfect layout control).


    What we need is for people who don't need it to not use it. When you're designing a page for a kiosk with a resolution like a Palm Pilot, you start to appreciate pixel-level control. "give or take a pixel here or there" is not acceptable behavior.
  • Guess what: people "misuse" tools all the time. People "misused" the telephone according to Bell's original intent for it.

    I need to mix graphics and text with a format that can be output with a text editor and display on a widely available tool. Gee Beav, I wonder if such a thing exists?

    Don't presume to tell me that I'm misusing anything unless you want to write and maintain my application for me.
  • It seems to me that if Netscape wanted to fit the "UNIX Mentality" well enough, they would include autocompletion, bash style. It would be nice to hit tab once to fill in the name, and if it doesn't have a match, you can hit tab again and get a drop down menu of choices. It would be similar to the IE5 version, with a bit of a UNIX twist.

    Ah well, we can hope that future browsers (cough, cough, Mozilla or Gzilla developers) will do something similar to this.
  • Good grief, that sounds like overkill.

    800x600 is fine for me most of the time on my 15"
  • Selecting an option from a dropdown no longer prevents subsequent text box input...

    Thank god someone else noticed that. I thought I was alone in the world. Once I figured out what was going on, I just learned to skip drowpdowns until I'd filled all the text boxes in, but I'll never forget the night I stumbled across the bug. I was trying to fill out the form to download a newer version to get around the bug that kept me from filling in text...


    ----------
    mphall@cstone.nospam.net

  • I found a workaround for that bug...

    Well, thanks for posting that, because I just discovered that dropdowns are still broken in 4.6 (at least on my machine), and your workaround works for Enlightenment/GNOME, too.


    ----------
    mphall@cstone.nospam.net

  • Re:Spell checker? (Score:3)

    by Pudding Yeti ( 9773 ) on Friday May 14, 1999 @02:44PM (#1891676)
    This is from the README. I've been told it applies:

    Starting with 4.0, we strongly suggest setting the MOZILLA_HOME environment variable to point to the Communicator installation directory. Many Netscape Client components now look at MOZILLA_HOME as a fallback or default mechanism in addition to the existing mechanisms from previous releases.

    csh, tcsh:
    setenv MOZILLA_HOME /path/to/install-directory
    sh, bash, ksh:
    MOZILLA_HOME=/path/to/install-directory
    export MOZILLA_HOME

    Hope this helps.
    ----------
    mphall@cstone.nospam.net

  • Leave those (dns) processes alone. They came from NS. You can kill them, but they'll just come back like a bad stomach virus. They should disappear when you exit NS properly, but sometimes they hang around after NS dies a fiery death. My 0 1 (two bit)

  • If every web site were composed of a few static images and plain text, using HTML "properly" wouldn't be an issue. From a design perspective, HTML has some glaring weaknesses, and "misusing" it is the only way around them.
  • Uh.... www.mozilla.org?

    --

  • You're hitting the nail on the head - NT stability is highly dependant on what hardware you are using. So your "sysadmin" skills really need to be to know what hardware to requisition.

    Note that this is similar to Linux's hardware support problem, except that the linux community is more honest about what hardware is "supported" (although much of that supported hardware has beta level drivers). Microsoft is totally willing to hand out hardware certifications and the "Designed for Windows NT" sticker to unstable platforms.

    I was under the impression that you shouldn't hot plug PS/2 mice under any OS...
    --

  • Use junkbuster. (Score:3)

    by mrsam ( 12205 ) on Friday May 14, 1999 @02:52PM (#1891681) Homepage

    Another way to avoid having NS block on DNS lookups is to use the Junkbuster [junkbusters.com] proxy, and you get to filter out banner ads as a bonus.

    One word of caution, though, manually bind Junkbuster to 127.0.0.1 - this may have changed, but previously the default setup you get by following README binds junkbuster to any IP address, resulting in an open proxy invitation to script kiddies.

  • Perfect? Didn't you just say it crash all the time? Whatta silly concept of software perfection. I find it completely unaceptable to have it crash on me.

    It *IS* Netscape's fault. They have not stick to the standards that much (until now). MS Inept Explorer 4, released at the time Netscape 4 was released, conforms to standards such as CSS1 more than does Netscape. MS Inept Explorer 5 is by far more standards compliant than the current Netscape version, 4.6.

    Besides, the HTML standards out there by the W3C say that if your browser comes across a tag it does not understand (ie. a non standard tag) it should just ignore it. Not crash.

    And what have the hangs related with NSLookups to do with standards?

    On the other hand, it is just a free product, we are not (directly) paying them to develope it. So it is not appropiate to discuss wether it is their "fault" or not.

    However, you are doing well staying with Netscape. Its just a matter of time until a usable version of their free version gets ready (something we will know as Netscape 5). Everything will change. It will never crash. It will fully support far more standards than MS Inept Exporer. And you will be happy.

    Alejo.
  • I agree that mozilla is a worhty project, but why can't they just release the code for regular Netscape? I understand that they have to take out all the roprietary stuff, e.g. Java, and the crypto, but other than that, I don't see the hassle.
  • I am running 4.03 under linux and it seems to be quite solid. It crashes relatively infrequently, It is certainly much more stable than the 4.5 version I downloaded.

    It also renders most everything I throw at it perfectly. What's the need for the later versions?

    -josh

  • So I still have Navigator 4.01 (I have communicator 4.51 in linux). I dispise it at times and love it at times. I cant think of a time it hasn't crashed when it's loaded a Java applet. Suprisingly I have had very few problems with IE 4.whatever.version.i.have, although IE doesnt like to read CSS scripting in DHTML pages very well. In Win98 I use Outlook98 for mailing purposes. I rather like it dispite what many people have said about it. It handles mutiple accounts decently and is rather stable. In linux I use Communicator for the web and Messanger to mail. When Opera comes out for linux I'll be very happy. It's one of the best browsers I have ever used. It's truely a browser, it doesnt have al lthe superflous crap that makes IE and Communicator into bloatware packages. It's a browser plain and simple. If they decide to add Java support and an XML parser to it...it will be perfect IMHO.

  • Mozilla! (Score:5)

    by SuperDee ( 14231 ) on Friday May 14, 1999 @01:02PM (#1891686)
    Well folks, I would say this is not completely unwelcome--4.6 does seem a little more stable than 4.51 was, although even so, I still can't get it to run more than a few minutes without crashing. And worst of all, unlike the current Mozilla SeaMonkey project, 4.6 is still proprietary, so don't even think about trying to go into the code and trying to fix the bugs yourself... If you don't like the bugs, tough--you'll have to live with them. Personally, I think Netscape has got to be the most unstable, bloated piece of software I've seen for Linux yet. I think the Linux platform is desperately in need of a better browser. I say, while 4.6 is a nice interim measure, at the same time, I hope Netscape isn't spending too much in the way of resources on the 4.x line still, for as Jamie Zawinski said, Netscape sunk a huge amount of engineering effort into the 4.5 release in 1998, and that was a huge blow to Mozilla.

    And on this front, I would say that Mozilla SeaMonkey is currently our best (and maybe our only) hope of getting a better browser for Linux... And what could be better? It is even open source! I therefore would like to call to all of you to help with the Mozilla project. Let us prove to Jamie Zawinski that all Mozilla needed was a little time.

    I am one of the people who is contributing. Admittedly, I am not much of a coder--I only just completed some introductory C/C++ courses. But you do not even have to know C/C++ to do things like file bug reports, or even just give tips. For example, check this [mozilla.org] out. These open source tools were suggested to them by me.

    Or, check out bug reports, like this [mozilla.org]. I submitted the patch that fixed that bug.

    My point is, you don't have to know much about programming to help. And I think Mozilla deserves all the help it can get right now. So please, let us help Mozilla.

    In case you people want to know what Mozilla is like... Let me say:

    1) It is a radical departure from the old Netscape, and about time, too.
    2) It is STANDARDS based. Example: ALL CSS1 properties are now supported.
    3) It is truly cross-platform, unlike IE. Cross-platform UIs are built using a form of XML, in .XUL files. These are really cool.
    4) It will support Skins (or Chrome), much like WinAmp. Skins anyone??
    5) Also please check out MozillaZine [mozillazine.org]. They have some chrome available there.
  • I don't understand why this is a problem...?

    It allows them to run Linux desktops/laptops instead of being slaves to MS's operating systems, paying fees for something they don't need.

    We should be happy about that, not upset.

  • No domestic encryption version as of yet.
    I am still using 4.04 here. I will try
    4.6 when the 128-bit encryption version is
    uploaded.


  • Maybe on Linux. I think the Mac and Windows versions had java memory leaks because they'd always crash on me after being open for a certain time.
  • It's a plugin.
  • You must have messed something up because it still shows up fine on my 4.6 version.
    ---
  • As was already stated, you should check out Fortify [fortify.net]. It can take any 40-bit encryption Netscape browser and convert it to 128-bit safely and reliably.

    I don't know if it will work with this new 4.6 version, but I'm going to try it. I'm sure they'll add official support for it soon enough.
    ----------

  • Re:url completion (Score:3)

    by Raul Acevedo ( 15878 ) <raul&cantara,com> on Friday May 14, 1999 @05:19PM (#1891694) Homepage
    I'd love to see URL completion. I don't understand what the complaints are about. The last time I used it on Lose95/98, it worked beautifully, because it automatically highlights the "inserted" text, so if it's not what you want, you just ignore it and keep on typing right over it.

    So, if autocomplete guesses correctly, you're golden and hit RETURN. If it doesn't guess correctly, you just ignore it and keep on typing the URL, i.e., it's exactly as if it weren't enabled. So what's the problem?

    Anyway, yes, I'd love to see it. I think removing it from the UNIX versions is STUPID. Didn't it occur to anyone to make it an option in the Preferences, perhaps disabled by default if indeed it didn't make the UNIX "mentality"?
    ----------

  • yeah...
    but, it's not like there is anything better out there, is there ?

    ok, Lynx is pretty good :)

  • 128 bit version here... (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Shepherd ( 17338 ) on Friday May 14, 1999 @09:37PM (#1891699) Homepage
    128 bit version [netscape.com]

    For those looking for it... For whatever reason, the link above doesn't work correctly; an extra space is inserted between the 'e' and the 'n' in the term "win32-en-complete"

    https://wwwus.netscape.com/usdl-bin/pdms_dnstest .cgi?PRODUCT=communicator4.6-win32-en-comp lete-128&COMPONENTS=CLIENT&TEMPLATES=NSCP
    Copy the link, paste it into the correct place, delete the extra space, and grab the 128bit copy!

    Found this at Ars Technica

    Hopefully this doesn't get lost in the thread


    -AS
  • It seems, subjectively, to be working better than 4.51 for me. (N.B. I'm using the glibc2 version)

    Slashdot seems to render faster, as do other sites, and it hasn't hung yet - though 4.51 hadn't hung in a while since I setup squid as a local proxy for my machine. (most of the hangs I used to get appeared to be blocking dns lookups and the like, so by using squid locally, squid deals with the dns lookups + data download, and always gives netscape something to chew on - even if it's a page of html saying "not found").

    Using the computer as its own proxy server may seem like overkill, but it's definitely upped the responsiveness of my machine. Squid is pretty good at downloading stuff :-)

  • Here's the way I get my mail. Note that fetchmail supports IMAP as well, AFAIK. This isn't any use with the remote message storage features of IMAP, though. However, it may be useful to some people, so i'll post it one more time.

    By a little constructive work, you can get netscape's "MoveMail external program" option to use procmail.
    First, I set up fetchmail to check my mail every few minutes, by calling it in .bash_profile, and putting this in my home dir:

    > more ~/.fetchmailrc

    set postmaster "myusername"
    set bouncemail
    set properties ""
    set daemon 600
    poll my.pop3.server with proto POP3
    user "mypop3username" there with password "my password" is myusername here

    fetchmail loops mail from my pop server into my linux box's internal mail system (sendmail) Sendmail is set up to use procmail on my RH6.0 box, anyway, so I didn't need to use the .forward mechanism to use procmail.

    Procmail can accept a list of rules for what to do with your incoming mail, _in addition_ to the system wide rules. These are stored in .procmailrc

    I added this rule ("recipe") to my ~/.procmailrc

    :0c:
    $HOME/nsmail/.netscape.mail-recovery

    This tells procmail to move a _copy_ of all my system mail (including the external mail looped in by fetchmail) to a file in the netscape mail directory called .netscape.mail-recovery This happens automatically whenever mail comes in.

    Then, within Netscape, I went to Edit/Preferences Mail&Newsgroups/Mail servers.

    I changed the server to (Using MoveMail), and changed the movemail preference to "using external application"

    Now's the tricky bit - netscape calls the external movemail program with a few parameters, which are supposed to tell it to get the mail from /var/spool/mail/myusername, and put it in the (undocumented, AFAICT) file ~/nsmail/.netscape.mail-recovery

    However - procmail's already done that bit! So, we don't need to do it again. I changed the "external movemail program" to "echo" with no parameters, as a sort of dummy command - netscape returns an error if no command at all is present.

    So now, when I click on "get mail", netscape goes off and finds a copy of all my mail.

    This is dead handy. note that a backup of all the mail could be kept by the procmail recipe (eg.):

    :0c:
    $HOME/mail.backup

    This rather convoluted sounding approach is the one I've found to be by far the most flexible. It allows me to use any combination of mail readers, by distributing copies of all messages between them, and allows me to use procmail's advanced filtering functions. It also neatly gets round netscape's "only one pop3 host" limitation, since fetchmail can poll as many as you like, and allows me to read all my system internal mail in the comfort of Netscape Messenger.

    Note also that, for security, the .fetchmailrc and .procmailrc must have restricted permissions set as documented in the fetchmail+procmail manuals.

    There - that wasn't so hard now....

  • If you can't get NT 4 SP3 to be stable, what makes you
    think you can make Linux+VMWare stable?

    A VMed version of NT crashing is a lot less destructive
    than the thing crashing nativly.

    Crashing 3 times a day is abyssmal and that's not NT's
    fault. Learn some basic sysadmin skills and then ALL of
    your OSes will be stable.

    This comment comes up quite often ignoreing that
    a) MS specifically markets this product as not needing
    a trained admin.
    b) information on NT admin is not always easily available
  • I work for the House of Representatives and all we run is MS Office products, Exchange email servers, and NT Servers. It bites. My f'ing computer (running NT workstation 4 SP3) crashes so hard at least 3 times a day that I have to cut the power. I can't wait until I can install Linux on that puppy and vmware NT.

    I would rather everybody was standardizing on Netscape than MS. At least my boss hates MS too...

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