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Bruce Kratofil, NABE Webmaster, is also a Senior Editor at BugNet and a co-author of Windows 2000 Secrets.
Windows on the Web: January 2001
Netscape 6- Ready For Prime Time?
After a nearly two year development process, the latest version of the Netscape browser was released late in 2000. Netscape, which is now part of the vast AOL/TimeWarner/CNN/Sports Illustrated empire, named the new browser Netscape 6, totally skipping over version 5. That's a practice not unheard of in the software industry. Microsoft, after all, jumped directly from Word 2 to Word 6.
During the long development process, the market share of Microsoft Internet Explorer expanded at the expense of Netscape. While Internet-wide estimates are no more than guesses, the server logs here at NABE.com show that about 68 percent of our traffic comes from IE. Many people hoped that after the long wait, Netscape would inject some healthy competition into the browser market. My initial impression, after testing the new release, is that Netscape 6 is not ready for prime time- in fact, given the number of features missing, it seems more like a beta release than a final product.
The New Look
The browser is actually a total rewrite, based on the open-source browser develped by Mozilla.Org. It also has quite different look and feel to it, which can be seen in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Most web pages will look the same
in Netscape 6 as they do in
Netscape 4.x or IE.
One of the first things a webmaster will check, when a new browser is released, is whether it will render, or display, pages differently than other browsers. Except for some very subtle differences in alignment, Netscape 6 will give pages the same look, especially on sites such as ours which strive to be "browser-neutral.". What's different is the look and feel of the browser controls and buttons. The default look of the browser is very blue. However, you can customize the look with different downloadable "skins" that change the appearance of the buttons and menus.
What is more important than cosmetics is the underlying stability of the browser- how often does it crash? I only tested it on one computer, a Windows 2000 laptop, where it was somewhat crashprone, especially when connecting to secure server sites. Every time I tried connecting to a secure page, the kind used for e-commerce, the browser crashed. Netscape 6 comes with what sounds like an interesting new feature, the Personal Security Manager, but every time I tried to access it, the browser also crashed. My colleagues at BugNet, who research software bugs and fixes, found that the problem was due to a missing module in the Personal Security Manager. You can download this and install it yourself, although it should be fixed in later editions of Netscape.
Netscape finally catches up to IE in its ability to memorize passwords for web sites. In fact, they leapfrog IE with the Password Manager, shown in Figure 2, which shows the sites where you have saved your password, and your username at those sites. They also leapfrog IE with a Cookie Manager, Figure 3, which gives you an easy way to check on the huge number of cookies your browser accumulates.
Figure 2: The Password Manager shows your username on all the sites where passwords have been memorized.
Figure 3: The Cookie Manager shows how many cookies have been deposited on your computer. Most cookies, including all the ones shown here, are related to advertising.
The initial release of the browser also came with a huge list of features, such as menu items and keyboard shortcuts, that aren't yet implemented. Given this, and the secure site problems detailed above, makes it seem as the browser was kicked out the door before it was fully ready.
Bottom line: Hold off on Netscape 6. Although I try to use non-Microsoft products as often as I can, this product is not ready. By the time version 6.1 comes out, many of these bugs should be fixed. Even better, hold off on the long download. If AOL uses their same marketing plan, every time you open a Time, People, or Sports Illustrated, a Netscape CD will be falling into your lap.
