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Netscape 6 Is Out (Really!) 544

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the good-luck-actually-downloading-it dept.
kvandivo writes: "It's now official. Netscape is now shipping 6 (at least for windows, linux, and mac..)" It'll probably be just a bit before anyone will actually be able to download it from any of the official servers.
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Netscape 6 is Out (Really!) More

Netscape 6 is Out (Really!)

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  • I'd describe it as more of a movie that's been edited for TV: Running time trimmed.

    That is to say the development was trimmed, as is the uptime of the damn program!

    After all, a Director's Cut isn't always a bad thing. Netscape 6.0 will always be a bad thing :)
  • Uh... there IS source to Mozilla. Where have you been?
    --
    Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
  • Right, that's why we're talking about Mozilla 0.9 and not Netscape 6.0.
    --
    Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
  • Because they left in the moronic bug where you have to run it as root the first time.
    --
    Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
  • Netscape 6 is the perfect example of why "blanket rewrites" never work out the way you intend them to.

    First of all, let me say that I'm so far moderately impressed with NS 6. I've seen the prior PR releases and Mozilla builds, and this actually looks and feels like a "release" quality product. I always felt the Mozilla and PR releases just plainly sucked for polish and buginess. For NS 6, Netscape has done a tremendous polish job , and I'm very surprised they released it this early with this level of quality.

    Now, having said that, their polish job wasn't nearly enough for this to be a *great* release. Rewriting a product is *always* chasing a moving target... and requires bug fix after requirements change after headache after political battle ... ad nauseum.

    The worst thing about rewrites is that usually developers are screaming for *another* rewrite by the time the rewrite is finished, because it has already begun to rot. I really, really, hope this isn't the case with NS 6.

    The aftermath of this release is going to be:

    - The impatient ones (i.e. 70% of web users) are going scream murder at Netscape's incompetence at releasing so many bugs. (ignoring that Linux 2.4 is over a year late, Netscape 6 is now around 1.5 years late, etc.)

    - The slightly patient ones (leftovers, i.e. me) will be somewhat disappointed, but hopeful based on initial experience.

    They really have to placate that last crowd. And if the code isn't clean, there's no time for another rewrite. If the majority of quirks aren't fixed in short order (i.e. Netscape 6.1 within 6 months), Netscape will probably remain a niche browser for UNIX platforms, while Windows and Mac users remain with IE. IE is just too good of a product now to choose not to use it for purely "but it's Microsoft" reasons.

    For now I'm going to stick with NS 6 to get used to it more. At first I almost gave up on NS 6 really quickly for odd quirks, but they somehow cleared up after I rebooted my machine. (Go figure). Anyway.

  • Netscape is out (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    of money!!!

  • Wait for 6.1! (Score:5)

    by darylp (41915) on Tuesday November 14 2000, @05:46AM (#624588)
    The nightly builds from mozilla.org are already leaps and bounds ahead of the buggy product that Netscape is pushing onto the world. (2 frozen screens and reboots in the first 10 minutes of using 6.0, everything fine on the Nov 12th Nightly.)

    Oh yeah, and a free clue to the Netscape rebadgers: I'm already online, so WHY THE F**K WOULD I WANT AN AOL ICON ON MY DESKTOP?

  • I personally think that trying to apply the Open Source development model for Netscape 6 resulted in a bloated, overdone program that is inferior to Internet Explorer.

    The nice thing about the Linux kernel (and Apache) is that at least they haven't suffered from an excessive case of "featureitis."

    For Windows 95/98/ME/2000 users, they're not going to bother with Netscape 6 given its bigger-than IE bloat and very slow startup speed.
  • FTR, IE 5.0 for the Mac doesn't use Microsoft's Java libraries. Uses Apple's just-as-out-of-date libraries. ;)

    ----
  • I hope you better run fast from the anti-IE crowd here. :)

    Personally, the biggest problem with Netscape 6 is that the interface leaves a bit to be desired in terms of ease of use; one nice thing about Internet Explorer is that Microsoft has bothered to use its excellent Usability Lab to give the interface a very good "polish" for ease of operation.
  • The Mozilla RPMs provided by Chris Blizzard (http://people.redhat.com/blizzard/so ftw are/) work fine together with the Galeon RPMs downloadable from Sourceforge. It's three RPMs you have to install (mozilla, mozilla-devel, and galeon)

    Indeed. I already have Chris' mozilla and mozilla-devel RPMs installed. I though it would be trivial to then add galeon, but that requires gnome-libs-1.2 (even the -rh6 RPM). A quick trip to rpmfind.net, and I find a newer gnome-libs in Rawhide, but that in turn depends on glibc-2.2. Short of upgrading to RH7, it's just not worth the hassle. This is with both galeon 0.7 and 0.8

  • I don't believe ANY of those flamers here has ACTUALLY tried Netscape 6 FINAL! I am testing it for 5 hours and it didn't crash. I browsed over 100 sites, NONE appeared BAD I don't have memory leak problems at all So what the heck is the problem of you people??!?
  • Compile your QT without exception support. That should fix your slowness problems.

    Are you using 2.0Final or a prerelease? Try upgrading to 2.0Final if not.

  • Hahah, the author of that article must have hit the pipe a few too many times before writing that article. Quoth he:
    Netscape does not own Mozilla, and if for some reason AOL cut the financial umbilical cord, Mozilla would continue to operate without the slightest of hiccups.

    Ehehahahahehehahah

    If Netscape cut funding for the Mozilla project, Mozilla would lose:

    • Dozens of its most active developers
    • the web site
    • the cvs server
    • the bug tracking system
    • the automatic build farm
    • a large collection of testcases and specs that live on hosts inside the Netscape firewall
    • many other important resources
    If Netscape killed Mozilla funding, that would be a very serious blow which Mozilla might not survive.

  • Re:40mb download? Get lost (Score:3)

    by JurriAlt137n (236883) on Tuesday November 14 2000, @06:15AM (#624625)
    How in gods name can a browser be 40megs?? Thats the size of a small OS!

    How old are you exactly? That's the size of a big OS...
  • In MB sizes...

    Linux distro+GTK+Mozilla > Linux distro+KDE (includes Konqueror)

    Windows (includes IE) > Linux distro+KDE

    Windows+IE+Mozilla > Linux distro+KDE

    MacOS (includes IE) > Linux distro+KDE

    MacOS+Mozilla > Linux distro+KDE

    Need I go on?

  • While many might blame netscape for releasing a browser that for many(including me) doesn't feel the way a finished and competitable product should feel.

    But Then again it was about time, Netscape was getting into serious timing troubles with netscape 6. MS is about to realease a beta of it's "Version 6" Browser and Netscape had to act.
    What is a bit sad tough is that Netscape maybe released it just a little bit too early.
    Why? Because M19(the next Mozilla Milestone) is labeled "stability and speed improvements" in mozilla.org's seamonkey milestone plan(yes i know there is a second plan which describes the mozilla and ns trunks more exactly)
    Still, maybe waiting another month may have lead to a much more improved product. On the other side in one month netscape's market share may very well be nonexistend(at least on windows, which sadly is the criterium)
    Maybe this was the right move by netscape. Maybe a inperfect final release was better then another month of delay.
    Whatever happens to netscape, I'm going to keep downloading mozilla nightlies while still watching other browsers such as konqueror
  • Anybody know when they'll release one for Solaris? Or are they leaving that to Mozilla?

  • Win32 is speedy, but.. (Score:5)

    by PacketMaster (65250) on Tuesday November 14 2000, @06:22AM (#624633) Homepage

    I got the full version early this morning from Netscape w/o any download lag at all. But I'm sure that's different now.


    Things Different:

    1) Load time is VERY fast.

    2) Page rendering is on par with IE5.5

    3) Most sites display correctly

    Things the Same:

    1) BIG FREAKING MEMORY LEAK!!I'm running Net6 on Windows 2000. Ever page I load increases Netscape's memory footprint by approximately 1.5 Mb. I let Yahoo's random page URL keep loading files and I ramped the memory usage up to about 85 Mb before I quit. Closing Netscape and reloading drop the footprint back to 4 Mb, which on first inspection is nice. However it quickly ramps up fast. Even entering data in this form box is increasing the ram count about 4K every 20 characters or so. Netscape 6 definitely should not have been released yet. This is sad and pathetic for the once innovative and powerful Netscape.

  • The nightly builds from mozilla.org are already leaps and bounds ahead of the buggy product that Netscape is pushing onto the world. (

    Great. All Mozilla needs to do now is tell the rest of the world (apart from the techies and those in the IT Industry i.e. Joe Average who uses a browser), that they have a browser, and who they are. Most consumers will recognise Internet Explorer, and some might even recognise Nutscrape, but few will recognise Mozilla. Having a great browser means absolutely nothing if A) you can't ship release code (they've had two years), and B) noone knows who/what mozilla is.

  • Depressing...*but* (Score:3)

    by ondelette (253185) <lemire&acm,org> on Tuesday November 14 2000, @06:28AM (#624636) Homepage
    According to CNET, IE5.5 is twice as fast as Gecko. We are not talking about a 20% difference...

    What is stunning also is that CNET claims Java under Netscape 6.0 is also much slower... which is really missing the point. Netscape 6.0 supports a plugable JVM (OJI)! Which means you have JDK1.3 support right now and better later whereas IE only supports the MS JVM which, as we know, is now frozen in time.

    When it comes to Java, Netscape is technologically way ahead. It is miles and miles ahead.

    (Same for Mozilla, of course.)

    Actually most browsers know have a plugable Java JVM mechanism... except for IE which bundles its own JVMs. That's quite a weakness of IE.
  • about:mozilla no longer works. It brings up the Book of Mozilla, but the N doesn't change into a fire-breathing Mozilla anymore! IMHO, this is the most disappointing aspect of NS6.
  • I agree. I think that the Gartner Group just did a study that showed that almost 90% of IE users were willing to use another browser if it only had a plugable JVM.


  • 1) I just downloaded the Linux version. The installer is pretty slick and I got high transfer rates, but unfortunately I had to do it 6 times before it would actually complete the install without hanging.

    2) Upon installing it insists that you register for their Netcenter website and the fonts where it asks you if you'd like spam along with your registration are so small that they're barely legible. Suggestion: Just click the link says "I'm under 13 years old" to get around the mandatory registration.

    3) So far this version shows no improvement over the nightly snapshots I've been downloading from Mozilla's site. Suggestion: Download a recent nightly build from mozilla.org instead if you really insist on upgrading.

    4) It won't render NVidia's Linux Drivers page. [nvidia.com] Lame...

    numb

  • That's the 'favorites' icons. When something gets added to your bookmarks, if favicon.ico exists on the server it uses it as the icon.

  • From an IE user... (Score:5)

    by 2starr (202647) <{moc.smetsys-thgilrats} {ta} {bor}> on Tuesday November 14 2000, @06:35AM (#624657) Homepage
    I've been an IE user for a while now mainly because Netscape has been losing the feature war. While I'm certainly not a Microsoft fan, I like Netscape and I like standards conformance (which Netscape has typically been better at), I use a browser a lot and I want to use what makes me feel most comfortable and lets me work the best.

    With all that in mind, I was excited to see that N6 was out because I've liked the Mozilla and preview release builds, except that they were buggy and seemingly incomplete.

    I like a lot of things in Netscape 6. The Gecko engine is great. It renders pages pretty fast, which is good. The "Modern" skin is pretty cool. Is it a good idea... well, that's another issue, but it's cool. There are a lot of features that I like in IE that weren't in Netscape 4.6.whenever-I-stopped-really-using-it like some of the sidebar stuff and the toolbar. (Yes, I know the toolbar has been in 4.7 or so for a long time, but it took them a long time to get it there!)

    Here's the bottom line of my impressions with N6: it's all in the little things!!!

    There are two things that are ticking me off enough to possibly send me back to IE. First, arranging the bookmarks. This should be easy: I have imported "toolbar favorites" from IE, I want them to be in my N6 toolbar. I'm a pretty smart guy and I have no idea how to do this. Drag-an-drop isn't supported, so I can't move them. Cut and paste are supported (even though "cut" is enabled in the edit menu. There's a menu command "Set as Personal Toolbar Menu"... which apparently does nothing! I know it's stupid, but these are the things that make me choose IE, not the engine. (Well, I shouldn't say that. If the engine was unacceptable it would influence me. But, being a typical web user, most engines I find are "acceptable", so it's not typically a factor.)

    Second big annoyance, I now have five icons on my desktop (I'm using Win2000): Netscape (I wanted this one), "Free AOL Unlimited INternet" (fine, AOL owns Netscape... I'll bear it), "Net2Phone" (quit installing this!), "RealPlayer Basic" (I already had it), "Take5" (See previous, I hate this thing).

    Goal for Netscape: Don't tick off you customers by installing worthless things. It may convince some people, but I think it angers more.

    Another goal: Do less, do it well. I frankly, don't care about skins. If I did, I would use WindowBlinds. But I do care about being able to set up my "toolbar favorites".

    I'm going to continue trying N6, because I like Mozilla and believe it can turn out good products, but I really hope the quality improves.

  • I've been reading a lot of comments comparing NS6 to current Mozilla ... and of course current Mozilla works heaps better!

    Netscape may have jumped the gun, but would someone who uses NS4.7x care to make a comparison of the two browsers (and mail readers)? I remember it was the same people here who had been asking Netscape to pull out and stop supporting NS4.7x. Now that NS6 is out, why don't you compare that with the old browser and tell us whether it's an improvement or not and how is it an improvement, if ever???
  • In the installer, the little "Activation" window popped up that wanted my name, e-mail address and ZIP code. I couldn't think of any good reason to give these things to them, but I thought I'd read the privacy policy and see what their intentions were.

    The link to the privacy policy didn't work. In fact, none of the little links did a bloody thing. Two problems: a) No privacy policy is a bad thing. b) Links don't work? Call me demanding, but I enjoy a good A tag every now and again.

    Obviously, they didn't get any personal information.

    Now I've got "Please wait..." written in the middle of a 400x400 window that's been hanging out there for the past 5 minutes. Looks like 6.0 is a dud.

    -Waldo
  • No, this is not a warez advert.
    I found this while searching the FTP server for a full download because I cannot use the net to download an installer which will in turn download other components.

    ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/netscape6/english/6.0 /windows/win32/sea/N6Setup.exe

    ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/netscape6/english/6.0 /unix/linux22/sea/netscape-i686-pc-linux-g nu-sea.tar.gz

    Check the URLs for spaces, I don't know why they are inserted when I post.
    Try ftp1,ftp2. Mirror if you can. Thanks

  • I believe that, unlike the NS6 installer, the IE installer does allow you to save the install files to disk.

    --Ben

  • There are three degrees of standards-compliance.

    Zero, mediocre, and perfect.

    Anything less than 100% shouldn't be tolerated when it comes to standards support; that's what standards are all about. I don't care if it's 99% compliant; IE5.5/Windows is supposedly 99% compliant too. That's not good enough when 100% is possible.
    ----------
  • I vividly remember how people used to think that it won't ever be released. I wasn't far to beleive it too.

    Sure, I'll stay with Mozilla, but I rejoice that the popularity of Netscape will boost Mozilla acceptance.

    Maybe we are going to avoid a Web hard-coded for IE, after all.

    So hoora for them. But they should get a bug-free 6.1

    (How much time until the first security hole popus up ?)

    Cheers,

    --fred
  • Does anyone else think it is odd that a commercial browser is 'release' quality when they take a slightly buggy beta release from an open-source project, add a bunch more much, much buggier features and then pop it out the door?

    I'll probably have ESR scratching my name on a bullet for saying this, but I think the Mozilla/AOL combination illustrates some of the natural incompatabilities between commercial marketing-department-driven software and open-source developer-has-an-itch-to-scratch-driven software.

    I keep up to date with the Mozilla code on Linux and I don't see any sort of AOL crap. That tells me that for this product, the poor developers branched their code and started adding all that AOL fluff. As far as most of us are concerned, that effort would have been better used fixing bugs on that branch.

    I hope this product stays alive; I'd really like to see it survive. I just hope the marketing doesn't get in the way of stability.

  • Someone else would pick it up.

    A lot of companies don't want to cede total control of the Web to Microsoft.

  • RPMs (Score:2)

    by Ed Avis (5917)
    Anyone got an RPM for it?

  • Re:I Downloaded It (Score:3)

    by Tet (2721) <slashdot@nosPAM.astradyne.co.uk> on Tuesday November 14 2000, @07:12AM (#624681) Homepage Journal
    First impressions:
    Yeah, all the bugs aren't fixed

    True, but I wasn't expecting them to be. That said, it's actually usable as an everyday browser (which is more than can be said for M18). The main problem with it, though, is that it's slow. Sure, it's much faster than M18, and in normal use, it's fine, but try scrolling down in long document or switching to another virtual desktop for a while, and then switching back. NN4 is significantly faster in both cases.

    It also still renders Slashdot's spacer images in the titles of articles with a greenish line around them, so they look like little green squares.

    The Linux version doesn't seem to have that bug for me...

    Why oh why do they need to do these damn small install files that go out on the 'Net and get everything?

    They don't! The installer lets you choose which components it will download. Worked for me, and I didn't get the news, mail, IM or the other useless bits. I would be using Galeon, but until they either provide a complete self-contained RPM or make it an easy compile, I can't be bothered. I still don't want an installer, though. I want a full install program. Net access from home isn't cheap here in Europe. I want to be able to download the whole thing at work, burn it to CD and take it home. Sigh.

  • Re:This is sad... (Score:3)

    by jesser (77961) on Tuesday November 14 2000, @06:41AM (#624682) Homepage Journal
    There are several bugs in Netscape 6 that webmasters will have to work around for a while, just like they have to work around Netscape 4, IE4, and IE5 bugs now. So while it's great that Netscape 6 does a better job at adhering to standards than IE5 does, that alone doesn't justify releasing a product that isn't free of bugs.

    On the other hand, I think Netscape had good judgement as to the timing. I don't think waiting another month after branch point would have eliminated all of the nasty bugs, but I think it would have set back the development of the Mozilla trunk and hence NS 6.1+ several weeks. I'm glad the weeks of rtm triage spam and "I can't believe you're not going to fix this for NS 6.0" flamewars are over for now. (Waiting another month before the branch point probably wouldn't have helped much either, because new bugs would have been introduced during that extra month.)

    I'm not saying that waiting another month wouldn't have reduced the number of bugs, just that it wouldn't have helped as much as it might seem it would have. And NS did need to get a new browser out the door with NS 4.76 rotting and with IE gaining more and more marketshare.

    --

  • > One benefit of the small downloader is that you
    > don't have to download EVERYTHING and then only
    > install a few parts.

    That is exactly what the NS6 installer provides: it downloads only the components you need. The original poster is complaining that it downloads them separately instead of all at once.

    > won't be using NS6 until (1) the bugs are mostly
    > out (2) its mozilla and (3) I can get rid of the
    > sidebar, integrated IM and other add-ons i don't
    > need.

    So use Mozilla.
  • Why will Netscape not let me import their themes into my nightly build of Mozilla? Is this a technical issue, or a marketing one?

    And, if a marketing one, anyone know a workaround to get some of those Netscape themes into my Mozilla?
    -----
  • Go here [sourceforge.net] then, don't bother with the bloat.

  • to describe Mozilla to Joe Sixpak (Score:4)

    by dpilot (134227) on Tuesday November 14 2000, @06:43AM (#624691) Homepage Journal
    Simple, Mozilla is the director's cut version of Netscape. That's terminology Joe Sixpak can understand.
  • BIG FREAKING MEMORY LEAK!!

    I really don't understand why people put up with this kind of thing when there are perfectly good C/C++ garbage collectors out there [hp.com]. If you know you've got a memory leak, and you just can't fix it, it's downright criminal to ship a product without garbage collection.

  • (IE opens the source in Notepad; Netscape just shows it to you)
    Since when do we all run windows? I'd rather be able to copy/past the source into ANY editor I want, not what MS tells me to (which I don't have to deal with anyways, cuz I don't run windez)

    Pope

    Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!

  • Re:This is sad... (Score:5)

    by wnissen (59924) on Tuesday November 14 2000, @08:21AM (#624698)
    Actually, needing "another month" to fix the most glaring bugs is not "true for every project". What is true for every project is the appearance that another month would be enough to fix all the bugs. Brooks (of the Mythical Man Month) called this the 90% problem. In reality, it takes approximately as long in calendar months (not programmer months) to do the last 10% of a project as it does to do the first 90%. When you take into account that the "fantasy factor" (the multiple of the actual versus predicted time to finish a project) is probably 2x or 3x, it can take a really long time to do the last 10%. I'm willing to bet it will take six months or more to get a dot release of Netscape 6 out the door with most of the outstanding defects fixed.

    Walt
  • It's the same one - both have build id 0811

  • For arranging the bookmarks, look at the "Manage Bookmarks" item at the top of the bookmarks menu. For adding things to the toolbar, use "Manage Bookmarks" and move or copy the appropriate items into the "Personal Toolbar" folder. For the icons, every windows program tends to add those. Drag 'em to the wastebasket and get rid of them if they bother you. Sorry, but I find every Windows product leaves cruft on my desktop I need to clean off, so Netscape doesn't bother me any more than any other one.

  • Re:Mozilla and Secure Transactions (Score:3)

    by DeadSea (69598) on Tuesday November 14 2000, @07:20AM (#624707) Homepage Journal
    Word of warning. Before you try this, make sure that the directory that Mozilla is installed in is writable by mozilla. After you install the psm you will have to keep the directory writeable due to a bug. If you don't mozilla will crash each time you visit a secure site.
  • > If Netscape killed Mozilla funding, that would be a very serious blow which Mozilla might not survive.

    Sure. It'll die overnight and get forgotten, like linux, freebsd, gnome, KDE or debian.

    NO. If netscape stopped funding, it'll loose developers. It would be pretty hard, but I highly doubt it would be fatal. (And I am sure that there are half a dozen highly succesfull companies out there that have a vested interest into fighting against IE and would found the Mozilla project almost instantly...)

    Cheers,

    --fred
  • > Did any of the compliance bugs named in
    > Flanagan's petition to postpone the release get
    > fixed before the final release?

    No. NS6 went to manufacturing almost immediately after that showed up.
  • Oooohh, god forbid that it won't run in emacs or vim!

    Please. Those two editors are the definition of bloatware. Notepad.exe is only 45KB, and it's a standalone program. How big is the entire Emacs package? At least 512KB, and probably more. Vim isn't much better.

  • I had a similar problem with a build of Mozilla a few weeks ago. However, my problem appeared to a tad worse; I was running it under Windows 98, and for some reason it wasn't releasing the leaked memory even after closing down Mozilla.

    I sure hope there isn't a similar problem with Netscape 6, or else things could get ugly.
  • The NS6 installer also lets you save the install files to disk. There is an option in the dialogs that says that precise thing. At least it is so on the Win32 version... not sure about the others.

    --

  • The specs for Konqueror sound pretty complete and impressive, so I'd be interested to head from anyone who could give a comparison of Konqueror vs Netscape 6/Mozilla both in terms of features and performance/usability etc. I don't care about the mail/news stuff in Netscape - just how it compares as a browser.
  • Oh, and why is there an option to download a UK version, but the installation doesn't give you the option to install UK English (yep, I had to go with the US English pack). Is there really any difference, or is it just labelling on ftp server?

  • OK, found the problem (It's still me) (Score:3)

    by MarcoAtWork (28889) on Tuesday November 14 2000, @07:23AM (#624722)
    OK, I found the problem (at least in mozilla, I'll retry NS6 ASAP).

    I have the proxy set up as 'autoconfigure' which is just a way that simplifies IS's life, since theoretically NS goes to the autoconfig URL, and gets the proxy settings, hosts not to proxy, etc. etc. etc.

    Well, it turns out that this feature seems broken in Mozilla, in fact, if I remove the autoconfig, and specify the proxy server manually, everything works just fine. I will try this on NS6 as soon if it finishes downloading.

    yep, that was it, now even NS6 works
  • " That tells me that for this product, the poor developers branched their code and started adding all that AOL fluff. As far as most of us are concerned, that effort would have been better used fixing bugs on that branch." If you had really been keeping up to date with the mozilla code as well as the development process (or looked at even one of the preview releases or even read a slashdot thread about them) then you would know that the Netscape developers did not branch and _start_ adding all that AOL fluff. TFrom the beginning there have always been two CVS trees, one for Mozilla and one for Netscape which pulls the Mozilla CVS tree and overlays all it's proprietary code. This parallel track has been going on since the beginning. The branch that did happen, (if you were paying attention you would have seen this in the nightly build directories starting on 9/22) _was_ a bug fixing and stability push branch. It was NOT a start "adding all that AOL fluff" branch. I repeat, that work has been going on in parallel since the beginning. I have been keeping up to date. It looks as if you haven't. -Asa
  • > Somebody please tell me that my code no longer
    > works because they actually extended the object
    > model

    No, they did something even better. They actually implemented the W3C standards.
  • Its hard to delete the IE icon, among others. If you do it insistently enough, eventually it cooperates.
  • Opera is also very annoying in its insistence that standards conformance is more important than being able to view a page - it sometimes is unable to view the page at all, showing a blank screen.

    Most of the time it works well (it is my main Windows browser, and is very fast indeed), but the standards conformance should be selectable - i.e. a button that says 'do your best and forget standards'.

    Unfortunately the Opera people seem to think selectable standards conformance is not important. The IETFers disagree, saying 'be strict in what you send and liberal in what you accept' - since Opera is on the receiving end of HTML, a 'liberal' option would be far more useful, and in the long run would promote web standards by selling more copies of Opera.
  • Opera beta 2 for Linux is about 2Mb (=10min) download. Netscape 6 is 40 (=3hrs 20min). Neither quite work, but Opera admits it's a beta.

    Someone take Netscape outside and put it out of our misery.

    TWW

  • Did they even QA this ? Also security problems (Score:4)

    by MarcoAtWork (28889) on Tuesday November 14 2000, @06:51AM (#624734)
    What about making the installer application proxy-aware ? I am behind a fairly fascist firewall that doesn't allow anything through (I have to use a proxy for http) and obviously the installer application just hangs.

    Fortunately the ftp site also carries the big tar file which I could download easily (and much faster than I thought, very close to 100KB/s average)

    That said my first impression is not that good since besides taking like years to start up (on a p3-550 w/ 128 megs) every time I try to access a site, *any* site, I get the following

    got a request
    JavaScript error:
    line 0: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) [nsIBrowserInstance.loadUrl]" nsresult: "0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE)" location: "JS frame :: chrome://navigator/content/navigator.js :: OpenBookmarkURL :: line 714" data: no]

    JavaScript error:
    chrome://navigator/content/sessionHistoryUI.js line 150: gURLBar has no properties

    If the URL is typed in directly I just get the gURLBar error, and not the previous one, in any case it doesn't work.

    Also interesting that opening up the preferences dialog gives this on the console

    we don't handle eBorderStyle_close yet... please fix me
    *** panel to load is = chrome://communicator/content/pref/pref-navigator. xul
    *** queueing up a panel...

    this is on a fairly vanilla RH 7 box, which should have been QA'd by the NS folks I think... the second time I ran this abomination it doesn't even give me an error, it just refuses to load any page (I still get the errors if I click on the bookmarks tho).


    An interesting tidbit, the default setting is to *save* all the data from previously submitted forms and passwords to sites (check in the preferences), and you can even display that previously entered data. If you leave your netscape unattended, prepare to be burned (IE at least *asks* you the first time if you want to save the passwords/form data)
  • Konqueror is nice, but it's still a bit unfinished. The Java part works, once in a while, most stuff will not work. I've yet to be able to open my.yahoo.com with Konqueror. It will be very very nice, when it's done...
  • If you had been actually watching (or better yet, participating in) the development process then you would know that any non-bandaid fixes that happened in the branch were contributed (subject to reviewers@mozilla.org) back to the Mozilla trunk. There won't be a big merge of branch to trunk since it was happening with almost every checkin for the last 6 weeks. One of the reasons that Mozilla nightly builds are as strong as they are is because of all the work that happened on the Netscape push to 6.0

    -Asa

  • Re:Wait for 6.1! (Score:3)

    by Genom (3868) on Tuesday November 14 2000, @08:47AM (#624744)
    >Oh yeah, and a free clue to the Netscape rebadgers:
    >I'm already online, so WHY THE F**K WOULD I WANT AN
    >AOL ICON ON MY DESKTOP?

    Lessee...

    - AOL owns Netscape
    - AOL has a history of advertising itself by putting itself everywhere you look - your tv, your mailbox, your email, your toilet, etc...

    Put these 2 together, and it's a wonder that installing Netscape doesn't automagically wipe out any internet connection settings you might already have and replace them with AOL -- all "To make your life easier" as AOL reps tell it. (A la AOL 6.0)

    Don't get me wrong - I disagree with this "In your face" style of advertising something that 90% of people aren't going to want - but I see it as a perfectly plausible thing for AOL to do, considering their record.

  • Re:This is sad... (Score:4)

    by SimonK (7722) on Tuesday November 14 2000, @06:53AM (#624749)
    Thats deeply unrealistic. W3C recent standards are extremely complex (I have the schema spec before me: its in three parts, over around 300 pages, is very informally written, and deeply confusing). 100% compliance is very hard, when you also want 100% compatibility with buggy web pages.

    Put bluntly: if you think 100% compliance and compatibility are possible, go do it. The world will beat a path to your door.

  • Oh yeah you get that very difficult confirm dialog that says something like "You can't store this in the recycle bin are you sure you want to permanently delete it? " and then you have to move the mouse all the way over to the buttons and click on the right one. I guess if you didn't have any arms or legs that might be a difficult action to perform so you could technically say that the icons were 'undeletable'.

    Well or you might be using that oh-so-impossible to use add-on TweakUI which makes it nearly impossible to customize Windows.

    Damn MS, their just so ignorant of what the customer really wants.

  • I tried the Mozilla 13 Nov nightly under Mandrake 7.1 last night. It might render more accurately than Netscape, but it doesn't look as good. The fonts it was using are just atrocious, and quite hard to read. I prefer the fonts Netscape uses. Actually, I prefer to reboot back into Win2K and use IE. So, is this font problem an issue with Mozilla, or just the X Window System in general? I am quite impressed with the look under Windows of decent fonts, and anti-aliased everywhere.

  • Re:This is sad... (Score:3)

    by f5426 (144654) on Tuesday November 14 2000, @06:53AM (#624753)
    > It was close. So close. Another month, maybe two at most, to fix the most glaring standards-compliance and stability bugs. That's all it would have taken.

    This is true for every project. But there is a day where you have to ship. If they had waited a couple of month, then there would still have been a few remaining bugs. You would have whinned the same way.

    See how linux 2.4 is slipping. More than a year late. Sure, it doesn't matter, it is free software. But for netscape6, it matters. The marketshare is almost 100% IE. In a few month, the web would be IE only. Be glad they released something. Be _very_ glad.

    Cheers,

    --fred
  • A huge downside for me is that NN6 only supports HTTP 1.1 through the proxy, which means that you can't use the Junkbuster proxy. Sadly, that means I'm stuck with IE unless I want to return to the land of the neverending banner ad.

  • Re:OK, found the problem (It's still me) (Score:3)

    by Number6.2 (71553) on Tuesday November 14 2000, @10:52AM (#624763) Homepage Journal

    This "problem" does not supprise me. The Fine Folks at Mozilla, while developing a damnfine browser, seem to be in denial about proxy servers: the proxy "feature" was fixed and broken about three times in the last six months (at least in Linux. YMMV).

    Needless to say, Moz works like a champ now (thanks guys!). I guess most of these Netscape types don't have to live behind a firewall (it doesn't seem like they have to test through a firewall, either...)

    Having said that, For God's sake, Moz/Netscape guys, don't stop! We wouldn't complain if we didn't care!

    Stirring the pot since nineteen mumblty mumble...

  • I have been keeping up to date. It looks as if you haven't.

    I followed the instructions here [mozilla.org] to get the source via CVS and every day or so I run 'gmake -f client.mk' which updates my source files and rebuilds. Is there something I should do to be more up to date than that?

  • YMMV but... (Score:3)

    by banky (9941) <gregg@@@neurobashing...com> on Tuesday November 14 2000, @05:46AM (#624774) Homepage Journal
    .. I have my cookie prefs in Netscape (4.75/X11 Linux) set to "only allow cookies from the originating server as the page" and the download links (click here... no, now click here... no, now click HERE...) stop if you don't have 'accept all cookies' on.

    Maybe it was a glitch. Anyone else see this happen?
  • Yup. All throughout my Netscape 6 install tree (NT), are CVS directories with Entries, Repository, Root, and Tag files.

    Oops.

    Michael J.

  • Why oh why do they need to do these damn small install files that go out on the 'Net and get everything? What I really want is a web interface that will let me pick my components and then send me an installer package custom made for my selections. It can't be that hard.

    Sounds like the sort of thing a corporate sysadmin would say. Who's time can be better spent than doing the same thing X times...
  • I'm posting this from OS Xb in Carbon Mozilla!
    Granted, it crashes unexpectedly and the fargin' MENUS are almost never in the same place twice (which is really weird), but compared to IE, this thing feels better. I always feel like I'm interfacing with molasses whenever I use IE, on any platform (MacOS 9, OS X or windez).

    Oh, and Copeland was dead years ago, and *rightly so.* Apple told Adobe they'd have to re-write all their apps from scratch just for Copeland, and Adobe told them to take a hike.

    Pope

    Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
  • I've been an IE user for a while now mainly because Netscape has been losing the feature war. While I'm certainly not a Microsoft fan, I like Netscape and I like standards conformance (which Netscape has typically been better at)...

    Ummm...both IE and Netscape suck at being standards compliant.

    The only browser that is fully standards compliant (as far as HTML is concerned) is Opera, which is designed from the ground up around standards compliancy.

    Yes, yes, I know the Mozilla people say the same thing, but I'm not sure how standards compliant they are. Maybe I'll test it against one of the W3C tests or something...

  • I've tried it (Celeron 366, 128MB RAM, NT4) - here is my take:

    - It's relatively fast (but Konqueror is faster and IE is faster too).

    - It takes a long time to load.

    - It loads the JRE on startup - why? That makes it take 24-25MB memory and I've got it up beyond 40MB just browsing af few sites. You can disable Java, and it will of course not load the JRE, but it still takes about 17MB!

    - It's a pain to manage bookmarks - I tried to rearrange the imported bookmarks from IE, but I gave up at last :-(

    Greetings Joergen
  • I think this is make-or-break time for them. It's about time they released something, but on the other hand, one would hope all standards have been adhered to, not just 'interpreted' or adapted like IEEEEEEE. B: "Hey rocky, watch me pull a Netscape out of my hat?"
    R: "Again? That trick never works"

  • I Downloaded It (Score:5)

    by Hrunting (2191) on Tuesday November 14 2000, @05:48AM (#624795) Homepage
    Get it from ZDNet's download center, and since it's just the basic install file, use the UK's servers for your download. It went pretty fast for me.

    First impressions:
    Yeah, all the bugs aren't fixed, which kind of sucks, cause there's a pretty nasty JS one that I posted about two weeks ago that hasn't been fixed in the nightlies and severely hampers some Intranet work I do. It also still renders Slashdot's spacer images in the titles of articles with a greenish line around them, so they look like little green squares.

    If you've been using Mozilla for the past six months, you won't notice anything new, other than the fact that it takes up twice as much memory, loads a bunch of AOL shortcuts (I'm using the Win32 version) on your desktop and will allow you to integrate RealPlayer 8, Flash, etc. with your download.

    Second Impressions:
    Why oh why do they need to do these damn small install files that go out on the 'Net and get everything? What I really want is a web interface that will let me pick my components and then send me an installer package custom made for my selections. It can't be that hard.
  • The installer _is_ proxy-aware, and will even support proxy authentication (which I need).
    Pity that it will fail...

  • This is sad... (Score:3)

    by Millennium (2451) on Tuesday November 14 2000, @05:48AM (#624798) Homepage
    Netscape wasn't ready yet.

    It was close. So close. Another month, maybe two at most, to fix the most glaring standards-compliance and stability bugs. That's all it would have taken.

    But no, they had to hand the project over to the marketers. So in the end, we get a Mozilla nightly plus a zillion ads foisted on us in every aspect of the interface. An interface which breaks every single standard known to man (it doesn't even get Windows quite right.

    At least the speed issues are more or less resolved. But all the same, I'm sticking to Mozilla for now. NS6 should be treated as an unfinished project, because frankly it is.
    ----------

  • Don't forget about theme park! There's a bunch of new quality themes you can download.

    here is a link to theNetscape Theme Park [netscape.com].

    Sky Pilot is a bit cumbersome at first, but it's growing on me quickly!


    -- Thrakkerzog
  • You're using a web browser, aren't you? There exists no browser that exists that supports any set of standards perfectly. Hence, you are supporting software which does not fully support standards.

    Only because there is no browser that supports them perfectly yet. But it can be done. Mozilla is so close to doing just that, that it's painful to see Netscape's marketroids release the incomplete version.

    You're right. Gecko is the closest thing out there to 100% standards-compliance. But unlike most other things in this world, perfection is possible when you're implementing standards. And when perfection is an attainable goal, nothing less is good enough.
    ----------
  • Just out of curiosity, I downloaded a mozilla nightly, and I get exactly the same uncaught exception error, so after all it's not really netscape's fault.

    I will submit a bugzilla entry right away.

  • I've been running this single session of NS6 all day and I'm at 43 MB total size. This is such a huge improvement over the prior Netscape which by now would be well over 150 MB due to nasty leaks in form input handling.

    --
    Ben Kosse

  • Netscape.com proclaims that Netscape 6 is here, but the download page only proclaims the preview release 3. The ftp site has the proper version. What's up?

    --
  • I have installed it, and everything seems to work, however:
    1. Motif-isms in buttons and lists are gone, and correct fonts and charsets are used, as opposed to what Netscape 4.x does.
    2. To disable gtk themes I had to change $HOME to the directory without .gtkrc, as nothing else worked.
    3. SSL didn't work correctly until I made netscape installation directory writable by user running it.
    4. There were no problems with Java or Flash plugin -- Java is actually the reason why I am using it instead of Mozilla, as later Mozilla snapshots changed the API and don't work with latest Java plugin anymore.
  • Really? It's slow as molasses on my Windows NT box :-(. Guess I'll keep using IE until Mozilla becomes an actual challenger.

  • fast mirror (Score:4)

    by sheckard (91376) on Tuesday November 14 2000, @05:51AM (#624822) Homepage
    A fast mirror of Netscape 6 will be available at ftp://ftp.heckard.com/pub/netscape6/ [heckard.com]http://www.hec kard.com/pub/netscape6/ [heckard.com]

    I'm working on downloading it now, should be done shortly. Netscape sites are really, really slow.

  • Opera does this. (Score:3)

    by Remus Shepherd (32833) <remus@panix.com> on Tuesday November 14 2000, @08:10AM (#624862) Homepage
    The Opera browser [opera.com] is 100% W3C compliant and does a very good job in retaining compatibility with bugged web pages. It also gives you several options for 'fixing' a bugged web page -- a button toggles the formatting of the page on or off, and you can even set it to lie to the server about what browser it is. This really is a dynamite little browser that puts both IE and NS to shame.

    Opera also has dozens of features that the other guys seem to have missed. I was so excited when I heard that Mozilla/NS 6.0 had a 'zoom' function...then I saw they only changed the text size. Opera can zoom into or out of a web page, changing text size, table sizes, and resampling any inline images. It also has a new 'fullscreen' mode that's amazing...I'm wondering if I can sneak Opera into work to replace Powerpoint for presentations. By comparison, NS 6.0's new features seem mostly limited to cookie control and changing skins.

    I downloaded NS 6.0 for NT this morning. Some bugs in the user interface, but I haven't found any fatal bugs yet. It's nice and I might use it for work (where NS is allowed and Opera is not), but the NS/Mozilla tech is not good enough to replace the Opera browser I use at home.

  • Re:I Downloaded It (Score:3)

    by Menthos (25332) <menthos@gAUDENnu.org minus poet> on Tuesday November 14 2000, @01:36PM (#624867) Homepage
    I would be using Galeon, but until they either provide a complete self-contained RPM or make it an easy compile, I can't be bothered.

    Huh? I test Galeon regularly but I've never compiled neither Galeon nor Mozilla. The Mozilla RPMs provided by Chris Blizzard (http://people.redhat.com/blizzard/so ftw are/ [redhat.com]) work fine together with the Galeon RPMs [sourceforge.net] downloadable from Sourceforge. It's three RPMs you have to install (mozilla, mozilla-devel, and galeon) and I don't see why they should be packaged as only one, and loose the modularity.

    If you want to try Galeon 0.8, you might have better luck with more recent Mozilla builds than M18 (Blizzard has those too).

  • on the upside... (Score:5)

    by el_doop (235938) on Tuesday November 14 2000, @05:56AM (#624889) Homepage
    the uninstaller is one of the quickest and cleanest I've seen. el_doop

  • Re:This is sad... (Score:3)

    by RedWizzard (192002) on Tuesday November 14 2000, @01:51PM (#624906)
    You can always spend an extra month fixing bugs in any reasonably sized project. In the Open Source world you can usually say "You'll get it when it's ready", however Netscape has commerical pressures and had to set a firm date.

    Also, there are very few parallels between Mozilla/Netscape6 and Linux 2.4, so don't try to make them. I wish people would stop saying 2.4 is late. It's not. Linus said he'd like a shorter development cycle, aimed at getting 2.4 out at the end of last year. That didn't prove to be achievable, but that doesn't make 2.4 late.

    One of things people have to realise is that there was no hard target for functionality in 2.4 (other than to fix the performance problem the MindCraft benchmarks exploited). If 2.4 was shipped in Dec 99 it would have been with less additional functionality than the 2.4 which is likely to be released next month.

  • Re:This is sad... (Score:3)

    by joshhull (245454) on Tuesday November 14 2000, @05:59AM (#624923)

    ... fix the most glaring standards-compliance... bugs ...

    i really wish people would stop propogating this mistruth... the standards compliance already far exceeds that of IE and Netscape 4.x. if you don't believe go take a look at the dom in IE and then in Mozilla and compare it to the w3c's recommendation for dom2. I can't even do basic things like getElementById in IE... so unless you think 99% of standards compliance is not good enough for you, don't complain! (99% is close enough for me)

  • It is nice, but DELETE YOUR OLD PROFILES!!!! (Score:4)

    by cybrthng (22291) on Tuesday November 14 2000, @06:01AM (#624934) Journal
    Netscape 6.0 is amazingly fast/smooth under Windows NT. They did a good job to get it out, but it still has its bugs.

    The *MOST* Important thing to do is remove *ANY* old mozillareg.dat's, and OLD Netscape Beta profiles and any old stale files.

    I had an old profile that it upgraded, but everything just acted goofy, crashed, or rendered wrong (don't know why). After deleting the old profiles and creating a new one everything runs MUCH better, LOOKS much better and doesn't act goofy.

    I'm glad they released this one. Its good to have a product they can get contsructive criticism from as well as build a foundation from. Better to ship now to get the product out then delay another 32 months to bloat it.

  • Re:Opera does this. (Score:3)

    by vanza (125693) on Tuesday November 14 2000, @10:17AM (#624943)

    The Opera browser is 100% W3C compliant and does a very good job in retaining compatibility with bugged web pages.

    Oh, c'mon, you didn't *really* mean that, did you?

    As for the standards part, sorry to remind you, but Mozilla and so Netscape 6 have the crown for the most standards compliance around (and they're still not 100% conformant). Opera does a good job, but every browser still have issues.

    I have digged a little and found this for your reading pleasure:
    Conformance tests results [harvard.edu]

    Now, about compatibility with buggy web pages you gotta be joking... some time ago I tried to test some pages from where I work in Opera, just to see how it behaved. Most HTML there is written by lazy designers using Dreamweaver, so it is a complete mess and a total junk, unless you are willing to spend some hours to fix it. IE shows them OK (after all, Dreamweaver outputs for IE). Mozilla does just as good a job as long as you fix the Javascript issues (just add DOM compatibility to the scripts). NS4 does OK also. But Opera completely garbles the thing. I was so shocked by the horrid result that I never touched Opera again.

    You may argue that "Opera is supposed to be about compliance, not buggy HTML", but in the real world we have buggy HTML in every place you go, thanks to old browsers not conforming to standards. And in that Mozilla kicks the hell out of Opera. Just check bugzilla and look for bugs with the "compat" keyword.

    You may like Opera, it may be fast and all, but please, get facts a little straight before claiming things like "100% compliant".


    --
    Marcelo Vanzin

  • Re:Mozilla and Secure Transactions (Score:4)

    by crumley (12964) on Tuesday November 14 2000, @06:05AM (#624989) Homepage Journal
    What OS are you using mozilla on? If its Linux or Windows, its really easy to add SSL support. Under the Debug Menu, choose Install PSM. Then follow the directions on the page that you get taken to.

    --

  • Re:This is sad... (Score:3)

    by IntlHarvester (11985) on Tuesday November 14 2000, @06:06AM (#625001) Journal
    An interface which breaks every single standard known to man (it doesn't even get Windows quite right.

    Try the "native.windows" theme on mozilla.themes.org. It gives Moz a Windows/IE look-and-feel and seems to fix some of the interface issues by using native-looking widgets. It also just seems quicker, although I'm sure that's only due to my own f-ed perceptual associations between IE and the default moz interface.
    --

  • Get Themes.... (Score:3)

    by tenchiken (22661) on Tuesday November 14 2000, @06:14AM (#625060)
    Be sure to grab some themes at Netscape Theme Park [netscape.com], as well as here [themes.org]. I am using the new Orbit theme, and Sky Pilot. Both themes react very well, and make browsing a lot of fun.

"Plaese porrf raed." -- Prof. Michael O'Longhlin, S.U.N.Y. Purchase