Netscape 7.0 ReleasedWednesday August 28th, 2002Netscape Communications Corporation today launched the final version of Netscape 7.0. This latest release is based on Mozilla 1.0.1, making it the first Netscape browser to be built upon post-1.0 code. The new version boasts several enhancements over the 0.9.4-based Netscape 6.2, including tabbed browsing, the ability to save complete web pages, print preview, site icons (Favicons), a download manager, full screen mode (Windows only), Quick Search within Mail & Newsgroups and Address Book, return receipts, mail labels, S/MIME mail encryption, CSS support in Composer and one-click web page publishing. Netscape 7.0 also has several features not found in Mozilla. These include the ability to access Netscape Webmail and AOL accounts directly from within Mail & Newsgroups, a button to easily toggle the display of My Sidebar in Navigator and P3P support for automated cookie handling. Improved instant messaging features — including file transfers, Buddy Alerts and Buddy Icons — are provided by AOL Instant Messenger for Netscape and ICQ for Netscape. There's also a round throbber with a cool animation. Netscape 7.0 can be downloaded from Netscape's web site or FTP server. More details can be found at Netscape Browser Central or in the Release Notes. n/t n/t Is cool to have 7 Languages suported already: ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/netscape7/ It would be really cool if they would release a Dutch version. The last Dutch version of Netscape was version 4.70. None of the localized versions I checked (German, Japanese, Spanish) are available for Linux (not yet, in any case, we'll see if they become available eventually). Just install the windows XPI for your particular language. It should work just fine. I just tested the German localization XPI on linux and it seems to work fine. --Asa Hopefully now that themes work between different versions of Mozilla/Netscape, more people will start creating themes. Is there an easy theme builder or something? I think lots of people would like to create themes for Mozilla/Netscape, just look at all those Winamp skins! The only reason I considered NS7 is the implication that they would provide and easy to create a theme with a smaller footprint. However, the links in "Theme Park" that refer to creating themes are still broken. Other than that, NS7 seems to be Mozilla with a lot of miscellaneous stuff added. Others will follow soon! I think new themes should be submitted to the Netscape Theme Park so that users can get the theme by clicking get new themes in the themes menu. They should create something like the Winamp skins site. ok, netscape joined the 21st century...now it's time for users to create skins that are available for downloading...the current browser is better than the previous versions, however it's not "dark enough" for me and it still needs to be sized-down (height-wise). So, who has created a skin software for netscape?...or...how do you open an "rdf" file (the navigator skin file). I believe work stopped long ago on the 'Chameleon' GUI theme builder because of theme format changes - I don't know whether the person doing that (iirc it was AOL/Netscape staff, but I could be wrong) is planning to resume. It was quite nice - probably not simple enough for 'real' end users, but then nor are the 'skinning' systems for many other programs. --sam There are two themes to go with Netscape 7. Toy Factory and American. They can be found here: http://wp.netscape.com/themes/7_0/index.html I always wanted to install it, and now they re-released if for 7.0 Tried installing it like this: javascript:installTheme('http://wp.netscape.com/themes/7_0/toyfactory.jar', 'toyfactory/7.0') doesn't work :( <pre>javascript:installTheme7_0('http://wp.netscape.com/themes/7_0/toyfactory.jar', 'toyfactory/7.0')</pre> Just follow the mentioned link and use use Uabar http://uabar.mozdev.org/ to fake that you are using Netscape 7 and it will work (it worked for me...) is it now possible to use Netscape 7 and Mozilla 1.1 with one Profile? YEs, and I have just done so. Both NS 7 and M1.1 detect if a profile is in use and will give a warning. NS 7 and M1.1 cannot run at the same time. there are still problems using netscape 7 and mozilla with the same profile. even the release notes for netscape 7 say so. http://wp.netscape.com/eng/mozilla/ns7/relnotes/7.html#prefs funny, the release notes say dont use the same profile but after you install netscape, the first thing it does is use your mozilla profile WITHOUT PROMPTING YOU to create a new one for netscape. so i create a new profile for netscape and when i use it i notice my privacy settings (cookie sites etc) were copied from my mozilla profile. so i clear my privacy settings on the netscape profile. and when i start mozilla, the privacy settings are cleared on my mozilla profile too. i recommend not using netscape if you have mozilla, even with seperate profiles. #73 Re: Netscape 7 and Mozilla 1.1/Restoring profile?by parcontre Sunday September 1st, 2002 11:56 AM I made the same mistake, except that I deleted a couple of mail accounts from Netscape and then discovered they were missing from Mozilla. Does anyone know how to restore the original settings? All the info is in my profile setting -- I can see it there -- but can't figure out how to get Mozilla to read it. I remember Moz having P3P support for a short while, but it was yanked. Perhaps it was a "proof of concept" so NS could incorporate it. quote from newsforge.com: "Netscape 7.0 will be replacing Netscape 6.2.3 in the AOL-Netscape browser-suites line-up. Netscape 6.2.3 is based on Mozilla 0.9.4.1 code -- rather outdated code by now. Since the release of Mozilla 0.9.4 there has been substantial polish improvement in the code-base. Many bugs have been squashed -- although there are more bugs now than then." If you look at the link on the newsforge site, you'll see it says mozillaquest.com! why oh why? The part that got me was the "there are more bugs now than then" rant. Michael NS7 has a new icon as well as a new 'i am busy loading' animation so netscape has finally abandoned that old ugly NS navigator icon but why oh why did mozilla change the lizard for it (after giving it some new colors). Ruud What is the difference between the contents of 7.0 and 7.0_bpd directories at Netscape's FTP site? Andras Both Netscape 7 and Mozilla 1.1. use realplayer 8 and not the real one player. Why is that? Because RealOne is basically the same as 8, except with a silly new UI and less functionality in the free version. And more advanced streaming technology... (for video only I think) If you have RealOne installed already, Netscape 7 will use it directly without installing realplayer 8. Can someone post an animated screenshot of the new throbber? I'm curious about how it looks. Found a still screenshot at http://www.cnet.com/software/0-3227883-8-20331576-6.html?tag=st.sw.3227883-8-20331576-1.txt.3227883-8-20331576-6 Would still be interesting to see this in action. http://mitglied.lycos.de/dandracom/images/throbber-anim.gif Like I said, cool. Alex x Looks pretty wicked. I like that they haven't switched to a throbber that you can hardly discern movement in, like the one in Windows XP. Did I also read somewhere about a much-changed splashscreen? It seems NS7 is based on Mozilla release 1.0.1, but it also reports Gecko 20020823? So does it use the latest 1.1 Gecko engine? I am puzzled... Once again, Mozilla 1.0.1 is based on the 1.0 branch. That branch is being developed in parallel with the trunk. The 20020823 means that it was built on Aug. 23, 2002 from the 1.0 branch. Take yet another look at the roadmap at http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap.html for more explanation and a picture of the branch and trunk. Just stare at it and you'll get it eventually! Did you get the question at all ? How does one recognize, that Gecko/20020826 is based on Moz 1.1 code and Gecko/20020823 (just 3 days older) is based on Moz 1.0(.1) ? Only because NS7 is "based" on Moz 1.0.1 ? Or is there indeed only one Gecko development and only the surrounding features make the difference between Mow 1.0.x and 1.1 (or 1.y with y > 0). In this case, NS7 would indeed use an almost current Moz 1.1 version of Gecko with the surroundings being based (but "enhanced") Moz 1.0. Your answer doens't explain this and neither does the roadmap, where Gecko is only mentioned once - in the "history" section at the top. The date you're looking at is the "build date". That's the date that the actual binary was compiled. That has nothing to do with whether it was based on the 1.1 branch or the 1.0.1 branch. The user agent says "rv:1.0.1" and that means that this build was pulled from the 1.0.x branch and not the 1.x trunk. The fact that it has a build date that is newer than you expected is because there is development going on in both places (the "parallel" mentioned by the other poster) _every day_. As a matter of fact there are 1.0.2 builds available today with the build date 20020829 and there are 1.2alpha builds available today with the build date 20020829 as well. --Asa Ok. This is a clear answer. So, also on Gecko - the rendering engine is developed in two different branches. I don't have have NS7 (I'm using Moz1.1 and stick with Moz probably). Does it report the same string as Moz 1.0.1, like Mozilla/5.0 (<your OS and language> rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 instead of some NS7 version/id ? Wouldn't it be better giving Gecko - as the most important part of Moz - a more meaningful version stamp ? With kind regards, Harald Henkel For reference previous Netscape User Agents have looked like: Netscape v6.01 on Windows (based on Mozilla M18) Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win95; en-US; m18) Gecko/20010131 Netscape6/6.01 Netscape v6.2.2 on Mac OSX (based on Mozilla 0.9.4.1): Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-US; rv:0.9.4.1) Gecko/20020315 Netscape6/6.2.2 See http://www.mozilla.org/build/revised-user-agent-strings.html for the meanings behind the Gecko user agent string standard, including how third-party branded releases (eg Netscape, Galeon, etc) should be labelled. "Date in the format YYYYMMDD. For official Mozilla builds, this will correspond to the date portion of the BuildID. For branded versions of Mozilla, the GeckoVersion should correspond to the date the code was pulled from mozilla.org, and may not necessarily correspond to the date portion of the generated BuildID." I may be stupid, but also this (or anything else on that liked page) doesn't give an answer to the question, if there are different development trees of Gecko for different versions/trees of Mozilla like 1.0.x and 1.1. Is Gecko a "component" wich is developed independently of the Mozilla surroundings - with only one current version at any given time - or not? Is it thus possible that other browsers like NS are based on some "stable" Moz version like 1.0.1 but using a Gecko version which might also be part of Moz 1.1 ? Might the next minor step of NS (like 7.0.1) be based on Moz 1.0.2 and a Gecko used in Moz 1.2 (pre,Alpha,Beta,RC,Final,nightly) ? This cannot be a too difficult question to answer ... at least for the developers. imagine it says gecko 1.0.1 and gecko 1.1 if the mozilla part confuses you. all the pieces are tied together. mozilla isn't a collection of independent works (at least from what I understand). thing of any project like this. if GNOME 1.4.2 came out, it wouldn't use the lastest gtk2, it would use the latest from the gtk1.2 line. I think mozilla is closer to that than whatever idea you're saying. if you know anything about mozilla this is obvious. it's one piece of software, not many (which I sometimes think is a shame). This is a first time for me.. Never had any problems with mozilla or netscape's installation. Error [-620]: A xpistub call failed. This happens when it tries to extract the file "libpcl4.so". After a quick google I found a few other people who had the same problem. They were advised to use a tarball without the installer. Ofcourse, Netscape doesn't have one :((((( They are saying on their front page "Don't Switch Browsers" and appear most upset the pop-up blocker in Mozilla is gone. I guess Tabbed browsing is not enough... See http://www.cnet.com/software/0-3227883-8-20331576-1.html I agree with that - unless you are one of the "I need a spellchecker" crowd, it would be a step back IMO. I tried it and the first thing it did - crash. Throbber icon in MailNews badly placed, many of the fine features of Mozilla1.1 missing (e.g. different icons), Toolbar overloaded with crap I dont want or need, not available for as many OS as Mozilla, and, yes, no popup blocking - I'll definitely stay with Mozilla. If all you want is a spellchecker stick with mozilla and just install it: http://spellchecker.mozdev.org/installation.html (Windows) http://mozu.sf.net/spell/ (UNIX/Linux) #44 Re: No reason to switch from Mozilla -- Spellcheckby zevious Thursday August 29th, 2002 5:50 PM The problem is that there hasn't been an updated xpi in 3 months. And the last time I checked, the latest version on the install page doesn't work with any of the 1.1 or 1.2 builds. I was hoping that this code would make it into the main mozilla tree so that it would just work... in theory. I have no problem running spellchecker on my Win2K and WinME machines with Moz 1.1 I just installed the latest xpi from the site and while it no longer causes errors or crashes. IT never shows any choices for replacement words. Am I missing something here? ... I do two things. First thing for it to work properly is to delete the component.reg file. Then after you relaunch mozilla, bring up a compose window, type something not in the dictionary, then add a word to the dictionary. After it crashes (it always does the first time you add a new word to the dictionary, for me anyway), subsequent use (after restarting) works fine. Once again, Netscape stripped several very usefull tools from the Web Development menu. I don't really get it. If I did not have a webmail account, I would probably switch to Mozilla 1.1. You can install the JavaScript debugger on Netscape 7.0. Just go to http://www.hacksrus.com/~ginda/venkman/ and click on the latest install link. For linux just install straight from http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/releases/mozilla1.0rc3/linux-xpi/inspector.xpi and http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/releases/mozilla1.0rc3/linux-xpi/venkman.xpi other platform accordingly. appears to work since NS7.0 appears to be based on rc3. I like the webmail integration also. #40 I'm a bit disappointed with the response so farby mesostinky Thursday August 29th, 2002 3:46 PM Most people can't seem to see beyond their own blind rage towards AOL/Netscape to give this product a fair shot. They either complain about the bundled stuff which can easily be removed or not installed in the first place, or they say "why should we bother over Mozilla?" Really I think its a solid supported end user product based on Mozilla technology. Wasn't that the point of all this in the first place? As reported on Slashdot, the BBC has an article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2223794.stm .Seems pretty fair to me, but some of the comments are pretty clueless. It's been a long time since I saw a nice and stable browser from Netscape. Netscape will have to keep putting new build out, as soon as mozilla 1.0x build are out to keep interest. Keep it up, may be more people will stop using 2 bowsers like me for example. There seems to be something up with the Netscape 7.0 Theme Park that prevents the successful installation of themes. If you're coming up against this problem, have a look at this forum post which should help you out (it will also let you install the themes in Mozilla): http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback/read.php?f=7&i=402&t=402 Alex Netscape has a great code base but they fail on their execution. First off they should stop mixing Real, and Winamp with their installer. Secondly they need to get rid of alot of those AOL ads. Third is fix the UI (a moz issue also, toolbar customization can't come soon enough). Then they'll have a product that can compete much better. It would also be nice to have the pop-up blocker. From Hyatt's blog it seems as though the engineers kinda know what their doing but the higher ups botch everything up with what they think is important. It's certainly a step up from 6.x but they should take a long hard look at user complaints and start being competetive. If AOL and Netscape really wanted to they could have a killer browser on their hands but they don't seem to care so oh well. I don't get it, why all the popup blocker issue is so speaked off, given the fact you can turn back on the feature under netscape 7.0 Flavio. One of the things that was mentioned as sorely lacking was the Toolbar Customization features, of which there are none. People like to personalise their browser. I just like to stuff with anything I can. Whatever floats your boat. Regardless, this *is* a big deal. Moz is great, and I was surprised with the polish that NS7 seems to deliver (compared with a few other lackluster Netscape releases) - excepting the splash screen, which was boring and unimpressive, but you get that. When this feature comes into play, I'll be completely sold. For now, though, I still love Internet Explorer for letting me change the positioning of the toolbars, the size of the icons, the text that is displayed for the etc, etc. Hahaha... slightly off topic, is there a skin for Mozilla / NS7 that'll make it look like Chimera .4? I saw, and was mightilly impressed with the polish of that UI. #54 I'm a bit disappointed with the response so farby mesostinky Thursday August 29th, 2002 11:29 PM All of those things you mention are either an optional install or can be deleted immediately after install. The only thing that even takes the slightest bit of thought is to install adblocker.xpi which is trivial. So what's the problem? I'm so tired of hearing that complaint. Widespread adoption of Netscape is a lot more likely than widespread adoption of Mozilla. Pleae remember that Netscape is NOT Mozilla's enemy. i don't see a reason to switch to netscape or mozilla yet :) Netscape release of Navigator 7.0 made it to the BBC website! "http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2223794.stm" 1 Hi everybody, is there an easy way (short of me fiddling with the chrome) to get rid off the Mail/Home/Radio/My Netscape/Search buttons next to my personal toolbar bookmarks? Thanks, Thomas #76 Re: How do I remove unnecessary bookmark buttons?by AlexBishop Monday September 2nd, 2002 7:54 AM > is there an easy way (short of me fiddling with the chrome) to get > rid off the Mail/Home/Radio/My Netscape/Search buttons next to my > personal toolbar bookmarks? Go to Edit > Preferences > Navigator and uncheck the buttons at the bottom. Alex n/t I cannot access internet even i had already setup the proxy setting. The same proxy setting my IE browser can access to internet How do I get rid of this extremely annoying and unnecessary splash screen in my mail application in 7.0. It is taking valuable time in a location where servers run as fast as snails on a hot day. |