Netscape Releases Netscape 6.2Tuesday October 30th, 2001Netscape today released version 6.2 of it's browser based on Mozilla. Downloads for a variety of platforms and languages are available (we've linked to the english builds, there are other languages of Netscape 6 available, and we expect that, as in the past, more tranlations of 6.2 will show up later), and you can also check out the release notes. This release comes off the Mozilla 0.9.4 branch, and is the third major release from Netscape using Mozilla. It doesn't seem to be "avaible" yet. Were did you get the info ? Maybe you have special right access ? Maybe we can't you the link directly ? Thanks May not have made it to all the FTP servers yet. Try http://home.netscape.com/download/ for other links. Cool, I never realized that they had a canadian english version. Wonder if they just covered "colour" or maybe some trnaslaters had too much beer while watching strange brew and canadian bacon :) What they need is a sweedish chef translation like google. The Canadian version sucks IMO. I just downloaded it, and everything is in American English: ColOr, FavOrites. I think just the spell checker is in CE. Weak. According to "about:", it's based on 20011019. On my first test drive, NS6.2 seems very polished and stable. None of those annoying regressions from Mozilla 0.9.5 (e.g. auto-complete pops up unexpectedly, session history screwed at cnn.com). This'll hold me over till later Mozilla releases. Actually, as the article above says, it's based on the 0.9.4 branch,not on the 20011019 nightly from the trunk. See the tree management diagram in the roadmap http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap.html and imagine that the 0.9.4 branch is longer than depicted in the diagram. So is 2001-10-22-18-0.9.4 the closest binary branch build we're going to get? (In other words, is that Mozilla binary the closest we're going to get to NS6.2?) And why was the 2001-10-19-04-0.9.4 directory deleted? #79 Re: So is 2001-10-22-18-0.9.4 the closest build?by schapel Wednesday October 31st, 2001 8:26 AM It looks like all the 0.9.4 directories except those containing the latest builds were deleted. The build from 2001-10-22 should be nearly identical to the build from 2001-10-19, because on many days only one patch or no patches got checked in to the 0.9.4 branch. However, if you're bothering to use Mozilla at all, you should be using the latest nightlies when possible anyway. This way, your effort isn't wasted on bugs that have already been fixed. It's up now.. running it right now =) It wasn't on the FTP though, you'll have to browse the Netscape site. And also, they havent really updated most logo's, so on the download 6.2 page, they still say 6.1.. Will probably be fixed asap i guess. Ah.. at last, I'll once again have a spellchecker =) What files from Java 1.4.0 beta 2 should I drop into the plugin folder to get Java working without installing an older 1.3.x plugin? NP*.dll from JRE bin folder? Or is that too much / not enough? I believe that is right... np == netscape plugin (Not 100% sure but it makes sense) Ok.. Thanks.. anyway, it seemed to work without me doing anything.. The installer detected that I had 1.4.0 installed or something. On the other hand, Real Player wanted to install itself even though I unchecked that checkbox. And not only did it install itself but it installed itself in about a million places. Icons everywhere, bookmarks.. Very annoying.. :/ Only really major (as in "very noticable and annoying") bug so far is that the scrollbars in the sidebar are VERY narrow with the Modern skin. :( Otherwise, it's working fine, tho it's a lot slower than IE 6 to use. Oh.. Just noticed another very annoying bug. While typing, the scrollbar on the right in this text area appears and dissapears for each keypress and the text in the textarea reflows and blinks. Hmm.. Not nice.. :( "Oh.. Just noticed another very annoying bug. While typing, the scrollbar on the right in this text area appears and dissapears for each keypress and the text in the textarea reflows and blinks. Hmm.. Not nice.. :(" It also happens in 6.1. It's bearable. Alex "It also happens in 6.1. It's bearable." Umm.. No.. really.. It's not. Not for me and not for a LOT of users. It's DEFINITELY a major issue. And that attitude is also a pretty big issue for the project. Fortunately, I'm pretty sure most developers don't feel that way. Having used IE6 and then trying Netscape 6.2, the difference in quality *FEEL* in some areas is quite noticable to Netscape's disadvantage. If your attitude is "It's bearable", I'm sure you disagree. Trust me tho, for most people, it's not bearable if they have an alternative. Thats strange. Runnng Win2K Pro here and I do not see this behaviour in the textarea. I noticed a previous post mentioning the same thing. I think that might affect its bearability :-) As for Real audio, the bloody thing is like a virus. NPOJI600.dll is the only file you need to put in mozilla\bin\plugins. You can leave everything else where it is. I haven't had long to test it but the Mac OS X version seems sweet so far. Got screenshots? There\'s not much need for screenshots. If you\'ve seen Moz/NS on one platform you know what it\'s going to look like on others. There is no Aqua theming to it but Modern fits in just as well as IE does with it\'s not-quite-Aqua-colour iMac theme. In this instance, the most visible differences are a slightly reworked menu layout and different save/open/print dialogs. Well, it works well so far, but I went back to my trusty (or sometimes not so trusty) nightly build so I can use tabs. :) I didn\'t think they were that useful at first, but now it seems weird not to be able to just ctrl-t or \"open in new tab.\" :) Also, the ftp link worked for me. Hmm.. I don't know.. I installed it, tried it.. and didn't stick with it.. It's getting closer tho.. Definitely.. Major issues (to me - as I can't speak for anyone else) are scrollbars and trees and their behavior. Under the Modern skin, the scrollbars in the sidebar (bookmarks for example) are very narrow. The bookmarks tree is VERRRRRRRRRRRYYYYYY slow to use and doesn't have hierarchy lines. History isn't exactly fast as lightning either, although a lot better.. In the history view, there ARE hierarchy lines, but the twisties are drawn under / on the side of them. There are some serious z-order & alignment issues there. Going to Mail & News, the scrollbar flashes in the inbox, then goes away but leaves a too narrow focus border on the thread pane. I was going to copy my IE bookmarks "out" from the IE bookmarks folder and into the normal Netscape bookmarks.. to the root level, that is. I copy them, but I can't paste them anywhere since they will go INTO a folder. Only way I could find was to create a temporary separator, select it and paste. And then delete the separator. You'd think a lot of people want to do this.. There should be a root folder called "Bookmarks" or something that you could select for these kinds of things. The Preference tree STILL doesn't have a scrollbar when you expand it.. Until you resize, open, close & dance a small dance and offer some cattle. Selecting menus and going back and forth through them, opening them and closing as you move the mouse, there's some degree of blinking... Not really catastrophic or anything, but definitely noticable when you're using to native menus. I don't understand where this would come from.. Certainly there's a double buffer so.. I don't get it.. Typing in textareas caused some weirdness with the scrollbar in the textarea. As I typed, the scrollbar would appear and dissapear for every keypress, causing the text to reflow and blink for every keypress. VERY annoying.. The installation experience was nice.. Only complaint there was that Real Player installed even though I unchecked that checkbox. And it isntalled ALL OVER the place, just like it does normally. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt that I just screwed up and selected the checkbox accidentally.. So installation and existing profile migration and everything related to that gets a thumbs up.. I'm not ready to move over to using Netscape 6.2 yet, mainly due to the reasons mentioned above. In general, it just doesn't feel very high quality to me, though there are less and less "serious" issues all the time. In the time I've used it so far, which isn't really THAT long, I haven't experienced any instability. Also, I haven't have any problems on any sites that I tried. All sites rendered perfectly as far as I could tell. That's also a definite plus and improvement. I'll stick to IE 6.0 for now.. but Netscape 6.2 gives some hope.. Maybe another six months... Or a year perhaps.. "Under the Modern skin, the scrollbars in the sidebar (bookmarks for example) are very narrow." It was like that in 6.1 too. It's intentional to give you more space for the content. Alex Despite crashing during the install (probably my own fault for not closing all other apps) Netscape 6.2 looks good. It seems much faster and responsive than 6.1 when doing things like opening new windows and menus. The vertical spacing between the items in the Bookmarks menu is larger than in 6.1 and there's still a few visual bugs but nothing major. I couldn't for the life of me get any of the themes from the Theme Park to install, but when I went there most recently it said "Themes for 6.2 available soon" so I guess the theme install page was displayed accidentally. Overall, a great release. Nothing major over 6.1 but worth the upgrade for the performance improvements. Now, if only some other tech sites would notice... Alex Despite crashing during the install (probably my own fault for not closing all other apps) Netscape 6.2 looks good. It seems much faster and responsive than 6.1 when doing things like opening new windows and menus. The vertical spacing between the items in the Bookmarks menu is larger than in 6.1 and there's still a few visual bugs but nothing major. I couldn't for the life of me get any of the themes from the Theme Park to install, but when I went there most recently it said "Themes for 6.2 available soon" so I guess the theme install page was displayed accidentally. Overall, a great release. Nothing major over 6.1 but worth the upgrade for the performance improvements. Now, if only some other tech sites would notice... Alex Okay, that's the second time I tried to post the above comment in the main thread rather than as a reply to macpeep's message. I was certain I got it right the second time but it still appeared in the wrong place. Alex I'd use it just for the NS6.2 upgrade in performance and the Mail/news bug fixes over 6.1 for WebMail.. Its really stable in W2K also.. Mozilla 0.9.5+ is really getting some stuff being rewritten, and to add to some rendering issues... Mozilla is closer to W3C compliance and IE 6 is furthur away.. so sites that render and look ok in IE6.. are actually not to standards which may at first glance appear broken in Mozilla but actually the opposite is true. How about that for a Halloween Treat from Netscape!!!!! We like it! Mozilla keep rocking.. As an end-user I now notice more things in Mozilla that are broken having used Ns 6.2 like dialogs are asking on send-mail for which way you want to send the message.. I've seen the textbox problem with 0.9.4 before and its because of the length of the message you are writing that the size is calculated after every keypress and hense the reason the scollbar appears and disappears.. which working in Mozilla now.. but there is Good skin-polishing here that Mozilla sometimes lacks.. it doesn't probably get updated as often. And a lot of the crashes in Mozilla are from alot of rewriting on core stuff and API feezes before M1.0 is done. Ns6.2 is really a good performance release, stable and good rendering to boot! Although bookmarks are not anywhere near as slow as 6.1.. I've got a 250K file full, having more folders than bookmarks displayed helps, working with your bookmarks that have not any folders can be slow. This will at least be stable enough for most.. I cant stand that I have to have IE around.. I dont use it except for saving webpage contents as a whole. Other than that Netscape really gives me all I need. Preferences toolbar (&scrollbar code) is being rewritten, its not going to be just a fixing of the scrollbar issue.. its going to use part of a API that is being added to currently. I browse the web, not look at the preferences panel all day like you keep an eye on your dancing cattle. macpeep.. try upgrading some drivers or memory, or add to your memcache setting in Advanced tab.. dont know about all your blinking issues, but all does not blink! Ns6.2 rocks over 6.1.. worth the time to download for performance issues, and many bug fixes that you may never know about.. -dman84
Does anyone know of performance problems with text fields? especially with textfields that are initially hidden but shown by JavaScript. I have extreme performance problems with a typing speed of about one character per second which is very anoying since you can't do anything in Mozilla while it shows the characters I've typed even minutes ago. Is this known or should I file a bug? Haven't found one so far... "macpeep.. try upgrading some drivers or memory, or add to your memcache setting in Advanced tab.. dont know about all your blinking issues, but all does not blink!" I don't know. You'd THINK that 384 megs of RAM would be enough.. And really, it's not *ME* that should adjust my machine due to strange behavior of an app. It's the app that needs to be adjusted. Everything else works fine and really, my drivers are all very stable and up to date. The machine I tested Netscape 6.2 on (Win2K box) is always turned on and hasn't been rebooted since I installed SP2, which is in the order of two months ago. The Win2K installation is rock solid and the drivers work great. Other apps, including games run just fine.. Toy Factore is great and I really unhappy w/o it on my Moz0.9.5 It seems that user_pref("dom.disable_open_during_load", true); made its way into 6.2 :) Cool, how long until everybody starts wrapping their window.open calls in setTimeout? This has already been caught by this pref. So not to worry. Jesse > This has already been caught by this pref. So not to worry. < Cool. I got a little time today to try to break this and I didn't find a way to bypass it in about twenty minutes of playing with JavaScript. Seems that all timeouts created during load time are marked, and all timeouts they create are marked, and all events created from marked timeouts are marked. There's probably a back door somewhere through indirect event delivery but I haven't found one yet. Nice job on this feature! on mouse move over the body tag? Ah, but then, that's what policys are/will be for. > on mouse move over the body tag? < Good one. Yeah, that works. And since I didn't put in a check to make sure it only happened once, it instantly created so many popups it crashed the browser. I was thinking onScroll would work, but of course onScroll isn't implemented yet. Maybe the restriction should be that popup windows can only be created within user key press or mouse up/down events. Well, it works well so far, but I went back to my trusty (or sometimes not so trusty) nightly build so I can use tabs. :) I didn\'t think they were that useful at first, but now it seems weird not to be able to just ctrl-t or \"open in new tab.\" :) Also, the ftp link worked for me. Is anyone noticing that the quick loader isn't working? It might be my machine (since I have a couple of versions of Mozilla on as well, however the option doesn't even exist in my "Advanced" tab? Otherwise, it seems like a nice release! I found the solution to this the hard way. If you have multiple profiles it won't let you use quicklaunch. Period. It goes out of its way to hide this fact from you though. I've made mention, and hopefully they will add this to the release notes. They are doing this because there are still many bugs related to multiple profiles with quicklaunch. Is anyone noticing that the quick loader isn't working? It might be my machine (since I have a couple of versions of Mozilla on as well, however the option doesn't even exist in my "Advanced" tab? Otherwise, it seems like a nice release! Despite crashing during the install (probably my own fault for not closing all other apps) Netscape 6.2 looks good. It seems much faster and responsive than 6.1 when doing things like opening new windows and menus. The vertical spacing between the items in the Bookmarks menu is larger than in 6.1 and there's still a few visual bugs but nothing major. I couldn't for the life of me get any of the themes from the Theme Park to install, but when I went there most recently it said "Themes for 6.2 available soon" so I guess the theme install page was displayed accidentally. Overall, a great release. Nothing major over 6.1 but worth the upgrade for the performance improvements. Now, if only some other tech sites would notice... Alex "Now, if only some other tech sites would notice..." As soon as I wrote that it appeared on Slashdot http://slashdot.org/articles/01/10/30/214227.shtml from the apparently-unaware-that-browsers-wars-are-over dept. Alex Other tech sites did notice, but I presume you don't include MozillaQuest as one of them. As usual, Angelo does his usual "cut-n-paste from the previous 3-4 reviews and add in a line or two new in there". Still ludicrously obsessed about the bug count (just how many major or critical bugs are open for 0.9.6 at the moment ? I bet you it's a lot less than the "1082" he's claiming), although I missed his standard rant about how evil turbo mode/Quick Launch is (he usually tells people not to install Mozilla or Netscape at all with this feature in - maybe he's finally relenting ?) - maybe his mouse slipped when he was cutting and pasting :-) Quite why Angelo keeps claim that each successive release of NS 6.x is "make-or-brake" (yes, this is how he spelled it) is beyond me. If the browser wars were over long ago like he claims later in the article, then NS 6.x can't actually be a "do-or-die" or "last gasp" offering, can it ? I keep wondering if Angelo has some sort of serious grudge against the Mozilla project - maybe he tried to get employed at Netscape and got turned down flat or perhaps he works undercover for Microsoft ? As I've said before, maybe he just needs to be medicated for his condition :-) Me? I'll just keep using Mozilla and reporting bugs - it's clearly the best browser on Linux now (yes, I've tried Konqueror and it's JavaScript support is dismal - how people fail to mention this in places like Slashdot and the like is beyond me) and it's pretty close to IE 5.5 and 6 on Windows too. Yes I did notice MozillaQuest's article but it doesn't really count as 'news' does it? More a digest of the last few articles. You've got to hand it to Milke Angelo though: his creative writing skills are getting better and better with each article! Alex > just how many major or critical bugs are open for 0.9.6 at the moment ? I bet you it's a lot less than the "1082" he's claiming < His claim is for all bugs targeted at that release, not just major and critical. The number I get at http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&bug_severity=blocker&bug_severity=critical&bug_severity=major&bug_severity=normal&bug_severity=minor&bug_severity=trivial&bug_severity=enhancement&email1=&emailtype1=substring&emailassigned_to1=1&email2=&emailtype2=substring&emailreporter2=1&bugidtype=include&bug_id=&changedin=&votes=&chfieldfrom=&chfieldto=Now&chfieldvalue=&target_milestone=mozilla0.9.6&short_desc=&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&long_desc=&long_desc_type=allwordssubstr&bug_file_loc=&bug_file_loc_type=allwordssubstr&status_whiteboard=&status_whiteboard_type=allwordssubstr&keywords=&keywords_type=anywords&field0-0-0=noop&type0-0-0=noop&value0-0-0=&cmdtype=doit&order=Reuse+same+sort+as+last+time is 1062, close enough for government work. For blocker, major and critical I get 261 at http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&bug_severity=blocker&bug_severity=critical&bug_severity=major&email1=&emailtype1=substring&emailassigned_to1=1&email2=&emailtype2=substring&emailreporter2=1&bugidtype=include&bug_id=&changedin=&votes=&chfieldfrom=&chfieldto=Now&chfieldvalue=&target_milestone=mozilla0.9.6&short_desc=&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&long_desc=&long_desc_type=allwordssubstr&bug_file_loc=&bug_file_loc_type=allwordssubstr&status_whiteboard=&status_whiteboard_type=allwordssubstr&keywords=&keywords_type=anywords&field0-0-0=noop&type0-0-0=noop&value0-0-0=&cmdtype=doit&order=Reuse+same+sort+as+last+time . Seems like it's still OK to play fast and loose with the facts when bashing "idiots." > yes, I've tried Konqueror and it's JavaScript support is dismal - how people fail to mention this in places like Slashdot and the like is beyond me < I have that experience just about every time someone tells me to try a "great" program on Linux. They're all excited and I look at it and maybe play with it for a little while, and it seems like crap to me. That's why I've come to the conclusion that Linux zealots have bad taste in software. It seems like all that it takes to make software "great" is that it's free and it runs under Linux.... <That's why I've come to the conclusion that Linux zealots have bad taste in software. It seems like all that it takes to make software "great" is that it's free and it runs under Linux....> I agree. Why arethere so few application for linux that are on par with windows. I dont mean networking software, of sys admin, but desktop user software. The only 2 peices of real "great" software that I can find for Linux are Mozilla/NS and StarOffice 6.0 beta. I personally want to migrate completely to Linux, but the lack of "great software" is stopping me. I'll be installing RH7.2 next week, with StarOffice 6.0 and NS6.2. The only major piece of software missing will be calendar/shedule applicatoin. But then again, that should be fixed once Oeone get their calendar incorperated into Mozilla :) Till then it will only be at best a 50% of the time OS. Here's hoping. I do however see some good projects for Linux, and things seem to be gaining momentum. I'm soon to buy a iPAQ and will try out a Linux version with it. This is exciting for me. Damien So which applications are you guys talking about? BTW, the calender that best fits my needs is korganizer, which has preprogrammed holidays for my country and many others. Erm, have you tried Evolution? I think that's a killer app. And the GIMP I find amazing - one stop for any image magic I want to do... And maybe also Red Carpet - or indeed apt, expecially if you're using Debian. Try finding an equivilent to those two in the Windows world... I haven't used the GIMP, so I speak from hearsay, but I know people who have who say it doesn't match up to Photoshop. From watching Linux people talk about their apps, or their GUIs, etc, I get the distinct impression that they must live in a weird sort of ivory tower where commercial software doesn't exist or it's all broken or something, because no Windows or Mac user would put up with the kind of basic configuration struggles and rampant lack of polish and/or functionality that Linux people apparently take for granted. No flamebait meant, just chiming in with an observation... > I haven't used the GIMP, so I speak from hearsay, but I know people who have who say it doesn't match up to Photoshop. < It doesn't. For one thing, it doesn't do color separation, which is the whole point of Photoshop. That hasn't fazed the hordes of Linux zealots who insist it's better, though. This is the sort of weird falsehood I constantly encounter when poking into Linux software that I'm told is great -- or used to encounter, before I gave up. > no Windows or Mac user would put up with the kind of basic configuration struggles and rampant lack of polish and/or functionality that Linux people apparently take for granted. < Exactly. It's biggest failings are that it lacks a little ui polish and the color issues. But the whole point is not print, it works terrificly for web design. I havn't checked in with them recently to see how their are doing on the color stuff, but it's not like its some impossible to overcome hurdle. As for UI polish, Adobe is FAR from innoncent here though. Lee said: >> I haven't used the GIMP, so I speak from hearsay, but I know people who have who say it doesn't match up to Photoshop. << >It doesn't. For one thing, it doesn't do color separation, which is the whole point of Photoshop. That hasn't fazed the hordes of Linux zealots who insist it's better, though. This is the sort of weird falsehood I constantly encounter when poking into Linux software that I'm told is great -- or used to encounter, before I gave up. < Erm. Who said it matched up to Photoshop? What the person was asking for was really good apps that run on Linux, and mentioned Staroffice and Mozilla as examples. I *definitely* stand by my claim that it's a killer app as well - as one of the vast majority of people that would never fork out the amount that Photoshop costs - the GIMP is free and just as good for my purposes. As to your 'for one thing it doesn't do color separation', I think you mean just 'it doesn't do color separation' - since this is the single major bugbear that practically anyone has with it. And as someone else said, sure this is a problem if you're going to send image files straight off to the printer and need it to be in CYM - but most people aren't and there is far more use of image editing for webpages (I know that's why *I* use it for) - and secondly hardly anyone sends raw images to printers these days - most plonk things into a typesetting program first, and those will certainly have a colour separation option... So yes, the GIMP is *definitely* a killer application - and runs of Win32 as well, you lucky things! The Gimp doesn't do a lot of things that photoshop does. I used to use photoshop a lot when it was freely available on the Macs in the computer labs at my last school. I don't use it now because it costs $609. That's about 100 dollars more than I'm paying for my screaming fast Athlon 1.4 GHz machine with a gig of RAM. I used to use PaintShop Pro, too, which I consider to be a bit less useful in functionality and usability to the GIMP but not bad for a free app. It cost $109 now. I use the gimp because there isn't a more powerful image manipulation program on the planet that costs me $0. I have never claimed that the Gimp was better than Photoshop. But it is the hands down winner in value. --Asa <Erm, have you tried Evolution? I think that's a killer app. And the GIMP I find amazing - one stop for any image magic I want to do...> I have seen screen shots and writeups on Evolution, and yes it does look impressive. I will intstall and try this when I get the chance, and I have tried GIMP and I agree, its great. It may be somewhat true that value for money Linux apps are not too bad (you cant beat free), but for comersial software, I just dont see the quantitiy/quality that is supported by windows. Dont get me wrong, I want Linux to topple windows on the desktop, we just need more deveoplers developing for the platform. You have to take into account that for the first 7-8 year of linux's life it was aimed at propeller heads and sys admnins. the attention to the desktop market is still a really new thing. The last few years have been spent building up modern applications development environments (KDE and GNOME) which are both coming to real maturity now. I think over the next year we are going to start seeing the first wave of truely end user oriented free software. I've used evolution quite a bit since the beta's started stabalizing, and I can tell you that it is as slick and intuitive as it looks. It is really going to spark up a storm. I was unable to determine from the sparse on-line documentation what protocol it uses for calendaring. iCal if I recal correctly, but i havn't used that aspect of it. Well, the most important feature for something like this is the ability to integrate with corporate e-mail and scheduling systems. The evolution web site says that you can schedule stuff with Outlook and Lotus users but it's sketchy on the details; it also says it doesn't support proprietary protocols, which both Outlook and Lotus use for their scheduling and e-mail systems. So I'm wondering how smooth the integration could be. A Linux-only solution that is only fully integrated with itself wouldn't help anyone in a real-world business environment. I think they are going about things in a reasonable way. Reverse engineering proprietary protocols is a time consuming proposition. For 1.0 Evolution is going to be the most featureful standards based PIM/Email client out there, future version will tackle the whole "seemless interoperability with Exchange" things. From your previous statements around here, I think you could agree with a plan to the get the basic, core functionality down, then add the cream features later. "...seemless interoperability with Exchange..." What? The integration is going to be shameful and unfitting? Unless you meant 'seamless'... Alex Why is it that MozillaQuest gets brought up in comments for nearly every goddamn article on MozillaZine? We all already know that he's full of it, so why repeatedly bring up the fact? Furthermore, why visit his site and give him advertising revenues he doesn't deserve? There must be more productive things you can do with your time than read mangelo's ravings, like learning to speak Esperanto or playing tiddly winks. The bookmark spacing bug is this: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=96817 Still not fixed in Mozilla either... I wonder where that title came from. This wasn't about symlinks... I bet you told Mozilla to save your loginname and password. Strangely mozillazine is the only site where this doesn't work for me cause it's saving the title instead. Password Manager looks for forms with 'password' text fields. When it saves passwords, it saves all the text fields on the page (but not textareas or other form widgets). It uses the content of the first field - in MozillaZine's case, the Title - as the username. There was a bug filed somewhere to make Password Manager smarter and use fields named 'login', 'username' or something in preference to any others when choosing the which field to store as the username but I think it got wontfixed. In any case, it wouldn't prevent the Title field from being saved but it would put the correct username in the Password Manager dialogue. Alex I'm using a 433Mhz/192MB box with Redhat 7.1. And Netscape is fast and stable. I especially like the fact that java and flash are both supported. I see the following problems with this release: 1. It still uses the 'Mozilla' directory in the Application Folder to store profile data in Windows (~/.mozilla in UNIX) it should use a Netscape6 directory as there's a few problems with Netscape 6 and Mozilla sharing profile data. Beonex, K-Meleon and others use their own directory so why shouldn't Netscape. 2. The icon on the desktop is called "Netscape 6.2" and when you do a simple upgrade it leaves my Netscape 6 icon still on the desktop but of course Netscape 6.1 has been overwritten so no need for this extra icon. 3. I notice simple MAPI support is in this release even though it's not made it into the last Mozilla nightly I tried, however the 'use system mail notification sound' feature is not in Netscape 6.2 even though it is in Mozilla. To me I consider that more important. 4. To the average user there seems to be no compelling reason to upgrade from 6.1, perhaps this release should have been based on something later like 0.9.6 3: The Simple MAPI bug is marked fixed, so it should be in there. Maybe they just forgot to enable the preference? 4: I expect there will be a release based on 0.9.6 or 0.9.7, this is just an interim release while we wait for 1.0 to come out. The fact that Netscape 6.x and Mozilla share profiles is really annoying it means I have to have two separate profiles and then use the profile picker to select the Netscape 6 profile when using Netscape and the Mozilla profile when using Mozilla. This is really unnecessary, it also stops me using quick launch! **Please make Netscape 6.x use a different profile dir to Mozilla** At last, after Communicator 4.51, there is a official Spanish version of Nestcape browser! Can't be more happier. ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/netscape6/spanish/6.2/windows/win32/sea/N6SetupB.exe Cool! Drag-and-drop bookmark filing sort-of works (specifically it seems to have problems with sub-folders). Alex After shelling out the $20 for a 6.1 CD, it would be nice if there were a differential upgrade from 6.1 to 6.2, rather than having to download the whole kit-n-kaboodle. Does such an upgrade exist? sPh Its nice that you want to support netscape? But buying 6.1? how strange. Anyways I bet if you contact netscape they might be able to help you. Even send you 6.2 on cd for cheap. #69 Re: Re: Is there a differential upgrade from 6.1?by sphealey Wednesday October 31st, 2001 6:39 AM Um, as far as I am aware the only way to get the CD is to pay for it. Besides making an indirect contribution to the Mozilla project, I didn't really want to tie up my dial-up connection for 5 hours to get 6.x. sPh #70 Re: Re: Re: Is there a differential upgrade from 6by dave532 Wednesday October 31st, 2001 6:44 AM There's no reason why they can't have some smartupdate release so that you can goto the Netscape smartupdate page and it tells you what new .xpi's you need to install to upgrade. However the only 6.x release I've seen it work (and in the loosest sense) with was 6.0 -> 6.01, so I'm assuming they were still having problems getting it to work properly so pulled it from 6.1 and later. Goto 'Feedback Center' in the help menu and express your views about how important you consider having differential upgrades available. #72 Re: Re: Re: Is there a differential upgrade from 6by AlexBishop Wednesday October 31st, 2001 7:13 AM "I didn't really want to tie up my dial-up connection for 5 hours to get 6.x." Five hours? How slow is your connection? I haven't downloaded 6.2 on a dial-up but I have 6.1. If you choose not to install all the useless stuff, e.g. Net2Phone, RealPlayer, Winamp and Flash (I assume you already have the last three), it'll take a couple of hours at the most (this is on a 56Kbps connection). I think you can skip Java too as it'll just use the 6.1 JVM. Not certain though. Alex #75 Re: Re: Re: Re: Is there a differential upgrade frby dave532 Wednesday October 31st, 2001 8:05 AM Yeah you probably can skip Java and also remember the installer features a pause button so you can pause the download when you want to disconnect then resume when you reconnect. This means you only have to download while you're online. #85 Re: Re: Re: Re: Is there a differential upgrade frby bcwright Wednesday October 31st, 2001 11:00 AM I downloaded 6.2 on a dialup (56k) line, a full download with ALL the options. It took just about 90 minutes exactly. However the line wasn't being used for much else at the time. --Bruce Where is the quicklaunch feature in Netscape 6.2? It doesn't work if you have multiple profiles enabled (in mozilla, it is buggy if multiple profiles are enabled). I wonder why the Solaris version can only obtained from Sun and not from Netscape like the rest? Also, there is a link in the 6.2 release notes to the sun page but there you still get offered 6.01A??? And finally: to download from Sun you need to register at Sun, which sucks. Not even MS requires me to register when I want to download IE5 for Solaris. This makes me angry. Yeah, Sun can be real pains about registering. E.g., Star Office 5.2. The most pain about StarOffice 5.2 for me was that I downloaded the 80MB in 8 hours via ISDN only to get a setup program that shows a splash screen for about 2 seconds and exits without any error message. And then I had to register again and again till I finally came into the support forums where noone could answer my question. So maybe SO 6 or a later release.... > The most pain about StarOffice 5.2 for me was that I downloaded the 80MB in 8 hours via ISDN only to get a setup program that shows a splash screen for about 2 seconds and exits without any error message. < I had a similar experience, and could get just as much help as you could. This is a normal kind of experience when checking out free software. The i's are not dotted and the t's are not crossed, whether it's as big and sprawling as StarOffice that won't run after install, or as small as a command-line-based FTP client that craps out midway through batch transfers. The people who like this stuff seem to really enjoy spending hours and hours tinkering with it and chatting in IRC about it. I'm not poor in money, but I am poor in free time. I'd rather pay for something that just works than spend my valuable hours futzing with something that almost kind of sort of works. I have been using the Windows version of SO 5.2 since it was first released and have installed it on over a dozen machines without a problem. In any large, or small, download there is the possibility of errors sneaking in. Perhaps you have a friend with a DSL or cable link that can download it and put it ona cd for you. If you know of an FTP site that can hold a large file I would be glad to put my copy there as it has been tried, tested and proven. I also have the ADABAS & JAVA modules that go with it. My problem here is finding out why no one in the Mozilla team has set up an import for the SO address book. Firefox & Thunderbird have been the first systems to come along that may tempt me to move up to OO1x. SO5.2 really does work and this is being done via it at this time. BTW I do use the foreign browser IE inside SO since many of the sites I visit as part of my day to day job only work properly with IE. Hopefully this will change as Firefox becomes more popular. Always ones to stay right up-to-date, CNET have just published an article comparing IE 6 and Netscape 6.1. For those of you who think that Rex Baldazo is pro-MS, he did support the Redmond browser in this instance. Daniel Tynan flew the flag for the bouys from Mountain View (no, not Google). http://www.cnet.com/software/0-3227883-8-7614087-1.html Alex "Daniel Tynan flew the flag for the bouys from Mountain View" Er, that should be 'boys' (and girls). Alex This article wasn\'t reviewing 6.2 at all. In it the pro IE guy says something along the lines of Netscape 4 used to crash so this one must be just as buggy. It\'s as if they didn\'t even try the browser and just looked at screenshots of it. Does anyone have an objective review? He *was* the pro-IE guy. The pro-Netscape guy was quite fervent too. I think the article's quite good, personally. And, "And, before Netscape and IE fans alike flood our in-boxes with irate e-mail, remember: this death match, like the others, is all in good fun." Lets see (my comments on the CNET article): 1. Installation With Netscape 6.1 and above you don't have to reboot after installing but with IE you do. Then when the system comes back up it does some post installation thing that takes up time. I've not found an easy way to make IE4, 5, 5.5 and 6 co-exist on the same computer but no problem making netscape versions co-exist (useful for web developers) Also those infamous AOL desktop icons died with version 6.1 onwards. Winner: Netscape 6.1 (by miles) 2. Interface Well I prefer Mozilla's in general but like the customisation of IE but think it has the most ugly icons in existence. Dunno what Rex is on about Netscape inserting an AOL bookmark in IE's favourites, that's just total rubbish. Winner: draw - Netscape/Moz looks nicer and I prefer its default layout, but IE has better customisation. 3. Speed I'd let IE have this one, although Mozilla/Netscape 6.x are getting faster all then time. I think in terms of startup IE wins except with quicklaunch (but uses up too much mem), rendering speed is about the same. 4. Security Due to IE's track record I'd go for Mozilla on this one and when full P3P support is in then there's no contest. 5. Standards support Well have to agree for this one too, because Netscape and Mozilla have the most standards compliance. Ok I don't get where they can possibly say that IE is more customizable than NS 6.x though I'm sure the tools for editing IE's GUI are more robust and available. When they say customisable they mean you can right click on the toolbar and click 'Customize' and select what buttons you want there, you can also drag the toolbars around. I know Mozilla is more customisable by editing the files but this is end user perception we're talking about here. Of course this sorta customisation will follow in Mozilla eventually, I think the most important things are being dealt with first. Unfortunately AOL On Desktop still exists (I got em with 6.2 too), but it's not like I can't delete them. It takes all of 10 seconds, even if it is annoying. Strange... every machine I installed 6.1 on and the couple I've just upgraded to 6.2 didn't have the problem of placing AOL icons everywhere. I'd not have installed NS 6.1 in a small office if I had to go around deleting icons all the time. I thought the icons were deliberately deleted for the following reasons: 1) so ISPs could recommend people download it without having to modify anything themselves 2) As it annoyed more people than it gained users. You know what? Cnet appear to have updated the article and just substituted '6.2' for '6.1' almost throughout. No doubt they didn't try anything again with the new software, but are worried about not being up-to-date... ;-) And it seems that this 'browser deathmatch' is going to be the closest thing we get to a review of 6.2 (funny, as they did a review of 6.01 and that was really minor). CNET do, however, have a news report http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-7733161.html on the release. ZDNet have the same article http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2821471,00.html (actually I think the article was originally a ZDNet one) only with reader comments and a different headline (apparently, releasing software that's compatible with Microsoft's latest OS is "jump[ing] on the Windows XP publicity bandwagon"). Alex Give them a chance, C|Net always take a few days to post up a review of new releases. The IE vs Netscape articles are just something that they do periodicly, and in this case happened to coincide with a Netscape release. #134 Off topic: c|net face-off between WindowsXP & OS Xby SubtleRebel Monday November 5th, 2001 11:19 AM I know this has nothing to do with Mozilla, but when I was checking out their comparison of Netscape and IE, I came across this face off between Windows XP and Mac OS X. I thought it was pretty good. http://www.cnet.com/software/0-429669-8-7618644-1.html #135 Re: Off topic: c|net face-off between WindowsXP &by AlexBishop Monday November 5th, 2001 2:47 PM I especially liked the way that Mac OS X is only better than Windows XP if you're willing to break the law and install it on multiple systems. :-D Alex #136 Re: Re: Off topic: c|net face-off between WindowsXby SubtleRebel Monday November 5th, 2001 8:08 PM Yeah it is funny how many people complain that Windows XP will not allow them to install it on multiple machines. It has never been legal to install a single license of Windows on multiple PCs. Although it is kind of ironic to think about Microsoft forcing people to obey the law, you can hardly justify complaining about it. However, I do understand the complaint about how XP can lose its registration if you change some of the hardware components. As often as some people change/upgrade their PC hardware, the XP registration process could be extremely annoying. No more swapping components in and out while trying to troubleshoot some hardware problems. Maybe I missed smth, but I've just noticed Could people have a look at these websites with 6.2: http://www.halifax-online.co.uk/ <- get a blank page. What's supposed to happen is it redirects to the secure site (it worked with 6.1 and the last mozilla build I tried it with) http://www.gner.co.uk/ <- the online ticket booking doesn't work properly but the rest of the site does http://www.guardian.co.uk/ <- the links "Latest News", "Our Sites", etc are meant to bring down a menu on mouseover. I also have a problem with the back button when I try and navigate this site: http://www.monkeyontoast.com/menu/index.htm Seen this prob in Mozilla before but I thought Netscape would fix it That site has frames, and there are many open issues with frames and the back button, for example, bug 102156 http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=102156 eek, Mozilla 1.1 for that one to be fixed? I thought this would be one of the things that should be a 1.0 stop ship I really dont get this: who wants a browser where the back button doesnt work consistently? (it drives me nuts, but I put up with it because I still believe in the mozilla project) I think it is bad to have NS6.2 out with the backbuttonbug, but to even think of releasing 1.0 without having this fixed is strange. I think this bug symbolizes quite nicely the priority problems in the mozilla project that have already been discussed before. The thing to do when you notice a bug is to check that it occurs in the latest nightly build, and if it does see if it has been reported to Bugzilla, and report it if it hasn't: The Halifax page appears as a secure site in nightly build 2001103003 on Windows 2K. The GNER site has not been entered. You can enter that as a Tech Evangelism bug, after checking that the problem you mention occurs with the latest nightly build. The Guardian site is covered by Tech Evangelism bug 96052 http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=96052 Lucky for you, it's bug week and you can get help on entering these bugs. The Halifax site appears fine for me in 6.2. I'm not sure the online banking stuff actually works though. My dad informed me that it didn't work with 6.1 and I suspect it's a problem at their end so the upgrade to 6.2 is unlikely to make a difference. Alex #90 Unable to change Instant Messenger Server settingsby darnell Wednesday October 31st, 2001 12:10 PM I\'ve sent this bug to Netscape, but it is a real pain not being able to use IM in the new 6.2 browser. I need to change the Port that IM runs over to 21 (FTP Port) because of Firewall issues. And I can not edit the Port setting in 6.2 for IM. To see this bug do the following: 1. From the Menu select Edit/Preferences. 2. Then select Instant Messenger/Connection. 3. In the top box that is the \"Server\" section, attempt to change either the \"Host:\" or \"Port:\" value. It can not be edited. When trying to click the text box I can not even get focus on the field. If I click the word \"Host:\" or \"Port:\" the text box gets focus, but you still can not edit the field. Anyone got any idea how I might be able to change the Port setting? #102 Re: Unable to change Instant Messenger Server settby kerz Wednesday October 31st, 2001 2:18 PM You want to create a file called user.js in your profile directory. In it should be first a blank line, then user_pref("aim.session.port", 21);. This will override any prefs elsewhere and set the port. Alternatively, you can add a line in prefs.js that says user_pref("ScreenName.aim.session.port", 21); and that will set the port for that screenname only. Hope this helps. I can only get the preferences dialog up once in 6.2, then if I try and bring it up again I've gotta restart Netscape first. When running netscape with the -console switch, I see *** Failed to load overlay chrome://communicator/content/pref/pref-IM_overlay.xul when opening the prefs dialog. Once that happens, the prefs dialog won't open again and Netscape doesn't shut down (I have to kill the process) Whoops. How'd QA miss that? Other than this bug, I've been really impressed with 6.2. Perhaps a 6.2.1 is on the way?
I had the same problem. I was upgrading from 6.1 It really bugged me, so I unistalled Netscape (On Win2k) and then re-installed a fresh Netscape install rather than leaving the old on there (I then rebooted for good measure). This seemes to fix it for me. Did you have 6.1 on your system prior to running the 6.2 setup? Yes I had Netscape 6.1 on there but Netscape QA should have already discovered that problem and fixed it. If you can't upgrade a product without having to uninstall the old one then that's not good. At least for Mozilla there has always been the warning to uninstall previous versions in the release notes. And uninstalling is not that hard, it takes me just about 10-15 seconds every time I install a new Mozilla nightly. The uninstaller deletes the files even much faster than Windows Explorer ;) And as my profile is not deleted by ininstalling all my settings are saved so there's no problem :) I've been having exactly the same problem for a while using the mozilla nightlys, except I have the problem with the mail window. I use quicklaunch, and it won't let me use the exit mozilla option. However, until recently, if I double clicked on the quicklaunch icon a tiny window would popup (just the title bar, no content, about 150 pixels wide x 15 pixels high). If I closed that then I could exit mozilla using the option on the quicklaunch window. Looking at the console, when I load mail the first time I see the following: *** Failed to load overlay chrome://messenger/content/mailIntegrationOverlay.xul I'll take a look in bugzilla. The bug for this happening to mail/news is 100375 http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=100375 Every Mozilla build including this Netscape version leak memory like a Mountain Spring leaks water. I like this browser, but does anyone know what the progress is on this thing using less memory in Windows? The longer it runs, the more memory it eats. Till is must be restarted and it begins the cycle again... #132 Re: What's the word on fixing up memory waste?by webmoebius Saturday November 3rd, 2001 2:14 AM Strangely, I have been using Netscape 4.X for the longest time and found well behaved memory management, until I recently went to Netscape 4.78, and noticed that it was leaking like crazy. However, after I started using Netscape 6.2 (the first Netscape 6.X release I seriously used without uninstalling and in fact migrated everything over), I found its memory management compared to 4.78 very tight. I could run it all night and Windows system resources stay high. I have heard other users like you who have experienced massive memory leaks with Netscape 6.X. Beats me. If you are using Windows 2000 or NT and check the memory usage of the individual applications Netscape 6/Mozilla is always using the most memory and uses more over time. So the Operating System runs fine, but the browser sucks more memory than any other application and continues to eat more over time. I hope they are using some type of memory management tool to check for leaks. A tool like Boundschecker or something... I saw a CNET http://www.cnet.com/ advert http://a.r.tv.com/cnet.12h/Ads/Media/Images/Banners/netscape.11_1NT6.2468X60a.banner.gif for Netscape 6.2 advertising the fact that it now has "easy-to-use E-mail". I don't see much difference myself. Was it not easy to use before? Alex Probably just because of the simple MAPI support. Means that other apps can now use mozilla easily to send email |