Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 15:11:58 -0500
From: "Jay R. Ashworth" <jra@baylink.com>
To: jon@lwn.net
Subject: Netscape 6 review commentary

Netscape: The Next Generation?
by Jay R. Ashworth
special to Linux Weekly News
===========================

Well, as you've no doubt heard by now, after several much maligned
"Preview Releases", the Netscape division of America Online has finally
released version 6 of Netscape Communicator.  It was a simultaneous
release for all three platforms: Win9X, the Mac, and Linux.

Since this is Linux Weekly News, and I have RedHat 6.2 on my laptop,
which is where I installed it, the Linux version will be the version I
talk about.  My comments will attempt to evaluate the product in two
lights: "is it any good?"  and "is it a consumer product yet?"

I will not refain from opinion, although I will present my reasons.

How it went for me:

A *posting from web design luminary Jeffrey Zeldman on Metafilter*
<http://www.metafilter.com/comments.mefi/4253> was my first warning.
I'd installed the PR2 release on my Windows machine several months ago,
and wasn't especially charmed.  Like all other applications these days,
either Netcape, the Mozilla team, or both, seemed to want to turn
Navigator into the next generation emacs -- the X Window System icon
for which is a kitchen sink.

But, I figured, what the heck.  I have a few spare minutes.

So I followed the link to the Netscape download page... looked over the
page... and, of course, could not find a 'Download' link.  Glanced at
the bottom of my screen, and discovered that there was an auto-redirect
to the tar.gz file... which was hanging, presumably because the site was
Slashdotted.

Reloaded the page, finally got the file to download.

64KB.

Obviously, says I, there's something wrong here.  Oh no, it couldn't
be...

One of those smart installers.  I hate those.  I'm sure they're nice
for the great unwashed at home, but, just at the two client sites I'm
spending my month at, I have almost 40 machines to upgrade.  Just give
me a big zipfile, ok?

Not having any idea how I might *uninstall* the program later, since
it's not an RPM (notwithstanding the fact that Netscape emphasizes that
it's supported on RedHat), I go ahead and let it download stuff anyway.

It hangs the first time, too, and I have to restart it, but it does
finally get the program down here.  And then launches it, without
telling me that it's going to.  On a 64MB laptop with a copy of NS4.7
already running, this can get tight, especially since it seems to think
it needs the Java VM running... for an extra 12MB.

It finally gets itself churned up to display a dialog box... which,
although *labeled* "Activation", is *actually* a signup form for
Netcenter.  They're not the first ones to pull this sort of thing;
anyone who regularly reads my weblog will have seen my rants on similar
'fast-ones', like those from RealNetworks.  I'm not especially happy
about companies lying to consumers to get them signed up for Yet Another
club, list, or membership that they may not be interested in, especially
without telling them what it means.

But what the heck.

So, after getting around that requirement... and I really no longer
remember how, so I'm afraid I can't tell you :-)...  I finally got the
browser window up and running.

I'm not real fond of the sidebar, but at least you can turn it off...
and who knows, maybe I'll change my mind.  My next trip was into the
setup menus.  There's a laundry list of things I do immediately to new
versions of Navigator: switch from image to text buttons to conserve
screen space, make sure cookies only get returned to the base-page
server, turn off the wildly privacy-invading "What's Related"
'feature'... what?  You mean I *can't* turn that off in this release?

Oh well...  what was that I said about "how do you uninstall it?"

*Reports from other MetaFiltarians* <http://www.metafilter.com>
seem to suggest that it has similar problems, although different in
detail, on the other platforms as well.  In what is a very brave move
for which the team will take endless guff, they've dropped
compatibility with many Netscape-specific extensions, so some pages
will no longer render, but that's not a bug, it's a feature.  :-)

In any event, it's probably safer, much as it pains me to say this, to
treat this as Preview Release 4, and continue to wait, probably for
Mozilla 1.0... you know, the release that won't have marketing
department input into its version number.  I continue to think it's
worth waiting, though my reasons why do not properly belong in this
review.

But, who knows; maybe it's just me.

*So many things are just me*.  <http://baylink.pitas.com>