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Netscape posts Netscape 7.0PR1 for review

updated 11:45 am EDT, Wed May 22, 2002

Netcape has posted Netscape 7.0 PR1, a pre-release version of the next generation browser for users to test and provide feedback. It features tabbed browsing for visiting multiple web pages in a single window, bookmark groups, Radio@Netscape for listening to music, integrated Click-to-Search for invidual words on Web pagegs, the ability to save whole web pages, improved search in Netscape Mail and Address Book, better corporate features in Netscape Mail (including S/MIME, Shared folders for IMAP, Secure LDAP, and Offline LDAP), new Instant Messenger, integrated ICQ, and other features. [Classic, OSX]

by MacNN Staff

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t_c
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Joined: May 2002

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05/22, 11:55am | report spam | close Reply |
Finally ...

-A browser based on a recent version of Mozilla

-A browser/mail package that should be (if mozilla not altered substantially) a better surfing experience than any other browser (except mozilla of course)

- A browser that corporations can have an easier time switching to ... I don't even know if the later 6.x versions supported LDAP!

- A browser that is not I.E. (on two different machines I constantly restarted, etc. ... haven't had a single freeze since mozilla .97)

MacNN.com Reader
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05/22, 11:57am | report spam | close Reply |
What's the difference?

What's the difference between Netscape 7.0 preview and the latest Mozilla build? I see none. But, because Mozilla is my main web browser, and I think that it's the "bee's knees" then I'll keep it that way. I see no reason to use Netscape 7.0 for these reasons!

MacNN.com Reader
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05/22, 11:57am | report spam | close Reply |
Netscape

Well...what the h***, they don't give up anyway.

anly
Forum Regular

Joined: Apr 2000

0

05/22, 12:06pm | report spam | close Reply |
Which to use?

Before I go DL-ing it, whats the diff between Latest version of Mozilla and Netscape 7PR1? Mozzila doesn't have an email client right? ( I forgot..used Mozilla ages ago...)

testudo
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Joined: Aug 2001

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05/22, 12:23pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: Which to use

Mozilla has a mail client. In fact, I believe Mozilla is very much like Netscape 4.7x in the extras it provides (newsreader, mail client, composer). It just doesn't have the Netscape/AOL add-ons (like IM, excessive toolbars or tabs or whatever those things were on the left hand side).

beno
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Joined: Jul 2003

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05/22, 12:51pm | report spam | close Reply |
hey thanks netscape

when will those schizofrenics at Netscape understand that people want them to either fix the disgusting heap of bugs that is netscape 4 or delete it and get people to upgrade. instead they add more confusion, by now promoting 3 different versions (4, 6, 7), causing everyone to wonder 'what do i need?' and 'where the h*** is 5?'.

macgeek
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Joined: Jul 2006

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05/22, 01:06pm | report spam | close Reply |
Try Chimera

Quartz based like OmniWeb, but uses Gecko.

They've done more in two months than Netscape has done in two years. Tabbed browsing is the future and the intergration with OS X is impressive, not to mention the setting that kills all popup ads.

I'm not a shill for the developers, just a dedicated user. Look for it on Version Tracker and read the comments for yourself.

I expect this to be my full-time browser in the coming months.

testudo
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05/22, 01:12pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: Try Chimera

They've done more in two months than Netscape has done in two years.

Well this is some chutzpah, being that Chimera is basically Mozilla with the rewriting of the interface (and other parts) in Cocoa. They're taking the last two years of work on Mozilla/Netscape and just updating it for OS X. Its not like they're starting a browser from scratch.

And basically every browser i've used has a pop-up ad killer (and ad blockers, and other fun stuff like that). I hear IE doesn't, but then, I don't use IE.

chas_m
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05/22, 01:12pm | report spam | close Reply |
Good for Netscape!

I must admit I don't see myself changing from Mozilla 1.0 anytime soon, but three cheers to Netscape just for dragging its a** back from the D-E-A-D just to do one more battle with IE. "From h***'s heart, I spit at thee ..." went the line from Ricardo Montalban in ST II, and I think Netscape is playing that part terribly well.

If AOL has the cahones to dump IE and use Netscape or Moz as their AOL browser, this could FORCE web designers to pay attention to standards again. This is a massively GOOD THING so I say download a copy of Netscape and give it a try today! Even if you end up sticking with Moz, we're still sending a message to the suits in Redmond. Shake up the system, baby, YEAH!

zaren
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05/22, 01:16pm | report spam | close Reply |
Nifty

Okay, that tabbed pages thing is cool. I might have to give NS another go :)

-----
Is Apple hardware still too expensive for you? How about a raffle ticket?

MacNN.com Reader
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05/22, 01:45pm | report spam | close Reply |
Hahahaha

Wouldn't they be better finishing Netscape 6 before releasing 7!?

MacNN.com Reader
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05/22, 01:59pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: Hahahaha

Don't expexct to see more Netscape 6 releases.

MacNN.com Reader
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05/22, 02:01pm | report spam | close Reply |
AOL, PNG, MSIE

First of all, I just LOVE chimera. LOVE IT. Anyone in reading distance of these words who has in any way contributed to this superb project (gecko, chimera, etc), you have my thanks. This is by far the most promising web browsing experience yet.

Second. I hope, (though possibly in vain) that if AOL uses Mozilla, (or whatever) as it's browser, that Microsoft will be forced once and for all to support that grand ole open source image format known as PNG. PNG is *the coolest* thing for web design. But since MS only supports the format on it's mac browser, I can't use it for anything. What a pain.

Here's for hoping that all the work done on Mozilla/Gecko/Netscape/Chimera/etc, will bring balance to the WWW as Anikin brought balance to the force.

MacNN.com Reader
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05/22, 02:07pm | report spam | close Reply |
OS X UI?!?!

I wrote them an email complaining how awful it is that they do not use the UI rules for OS X. Radio buttons, push buttons, pop-up menus, etc. all look like c*** because they want to render on their own. I will not use a horrible app that looks like like NS7 does. It's an insult to the beauty of Aqua.

Ashami
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Joined: May 2002

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05/22, 02:29pm | report spam | close Reply |
Netscape 7

Well, I downloaded Netscape 7 and all I can say is that I am underwhelmed.

As far as I'm concerned, at this point, any browser "update" that doesn't take full advantage of Quartz (like Omni) and takes longer than 5 seconds to bring up a window is NOT an update...it's a rehash.

C'mon Netscape...quit teasing us!

bryan.falchuk

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05/22, 02:40pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
PNG? Are you crazy?

Are you friggin kidding me? PNG? PNG images look great, I'll give you that, but they are HUGE files. When Unisys was threatening to prosecute anyone using a GIF since they wrote the original compression for it, I tried to redo a site with PNGs, and the smallest image went from 1k to 87k. That's totally unacceptable. However, when loading locally off my HD so speed wasn't an issue, the site looked great. If they can do a second version of PNG that produces files half as big but look as good, I'd consider it. Perhaps they can work on the compression algorithms a bit.

ster

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05/22, 03:17pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
ST II

Nit-picking, I know:

"From h***'s heart, I STAB at thee. For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee."

It's from Moby d***, quoted in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

-Ster

the Rebel
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05/22, 03:33pm | report spam | close Reply |
Mozilla & Netscape

Another difference between Netscape 7 and Mozilla 1.0 is that Netscape includes a spellchecker in the email client.

Chimera is coming along very nicely, but Chimera would not exist if it were not for Mozilla/Netscape developers who have been building and debugging the codebase for the past few years. Of course it is also worth mentioning that Chimera is being developed by a group of Mozilla/Netscape engineers.

Netscape is not trying to promote 3 different browser versions. Netscape wants to dump 4.x but they continued to maintain it because 6.0 was such a disaster; since the vastly superior 6.2 was released, there has been virtually nothing done with the 4.x series. When Netscape 7 is released (a pre-release does not count), Netscape will stop promoting Netscape 6. As for what happenned to Netscape 5, you can go download it from the Mozilla.org archives if you want; it was built on the Netscape 4.x codebase, but it was never finished because they dumped that codebase to start over fresh for Mozilla 1.0 development.

MacNN.com Reader
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05/22, 03:45pm | report spam | close Reply |
too little, too late

netscape = nutscrape

yuhui
Junior Member

Joined: Jan 2000

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05/22, 03:50pm | report spam | close Reply |
Integrated ICQ?

Where does it say that Netscape 7.0PR1 integrates ICQ? I couldn't find any reference to this on Netscape's Web site.

MacNN.com Reader
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05/22, 04:03pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: Integrated ICQ?

Just click on the Intant Message icon and you can choose between AIM and ICQ.

pastusza
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Joined: Nov 1999

0

05/22, 04:13pm | report spam | close Reply |
AIM and ICQ

AIM and ICQ both use the OSCAR protocol now, so you should be able to log in to either program. That's why your ICQ contacts are server side now.

chas_m
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05/22, 04:20pm | report spam | close Reply |
I'm pathetic (attn: ster

Arrgh, it's a testament to what pop culture has done as far as scrambling my brains that I (sorta) knew the quote from ST II, and not from it's original source, Moby d***.

Which I've actually read, even! (about 30 years ago, mind.)

Sorry. I'm now consumed with visions of my grandchildren trying to locate the "original" Klingon translation of Hamlet ...

MacNN.com Reader
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05/22, 04:37pm | report spam | close Reply |
IE still rocks

Why is it so hard for people to admit that IE is the best browser on the Mac? This isn't my opinion, it's a fact. The fact that it is compatible, pretty, clean, customizable and fast? These other alternatives might be nice but they lack compatibility and support from a major coporation like m$oft and they aren't Apple's browser of choice even after they ended their contract with M$oft.

idesomarch
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Joined: May 2002

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05/22, 05:02pm | report spam | close Reply |
Slowwwwwwwwwwwwwww

Just a few thoughts....Netscape 7 is not ready for prime time. Is glacial slowness a feature? It taks 35 seconds to start up, that is unacceptble to me. Chimera is far, far faster, but lacks a lot of features. Netscape 7 does not do Aqua nearly as well as Chimera or Omniweb. Chimera and Omniweb seem to be the best bet for me, Netscape 7 is just a bloated mess, too bad!

Lint
Junior Member

Joined: May 1999

0

05/22, 06:35pm | report spam | close Reply |
Menus

The contextual menus in this NS and the previous mozilla dont use aqua.

ster

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05/22, 06:57pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
chas_m

Chuckle!
Ummm: "Tok b'ah, Tok b'eh?"
(General Chang reciting "To be, or not to be?" in the original Klingon.)

-Ster

hwdbytes
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05/22, 06:57pm | report spam | close Reply |
spitting fm h***'s heart

I really am getting to be an old guy, but I can't resist pointing out that in ST II, Khan (Ricardo Montalban's character) was repeating a line from the climax of Herman Melville's "Moby d***" when Captain Ahab, making his final harpoon jab at the white whale, says: "from h***'s heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee."

OTOH, so far so good with the Netscape 7 preview on my PB Wallstreet running OS X 10.1.4. It seems quicker than IE and I'm happy to get another Microsoft product off my desktop. Talk about stabbing at white whales.

Me�vv
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05/22, 07:09pm | report spam | close Reply |
Radio?

Did anyone get the Radio to work under OS X?
What is the story with OS X and RealPlayer / RealAudio anyway?

MacNN.com Reader
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05/22, 07:09pm | report spam | close Reply |
Net's c***

Netscape sucks, I'd rather use IE than it, yeah, it's that bad. Mozilla is fast, but it's GUI is an abomination, totally lame and difficult to use...the tabbed browsing is nice but using Mozilla to download anything is an awful experience. Don't any Mozilla developers download p***?

My favorite OS X browsers are Omniweb and Chimera. OW is what I use full time, but I think Chimera has lots of promise, and with more development may surpass OW. I still have IE on my HD for those times where nothing else will view a website correctly, but I'm looking forward to the day I can wipe my HD clean of IE.

spotbug
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05/22, 07:32pm | report spam | close Reply |
PNG is smaller than GIF

It uses the zlib compression library which is better than UNISYS's compression.

If you're starting with the same pixel data, the PNG will end up smaller. The key is starting with the same pixel data. GIFs are 8-bit. PNG's are usually 24-bit or 32-bit (or higher) That's why they look better. However, you certainly *can* make 8-bit PNGs.

So, to switch from GIFs to PNGs and get the same size files (actually smaller), you need to quantize your images to 8-bit before saving the PNG; just as you were *required* to do when you were making your old GIFs.

MacNN.com Reader
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05/22, 07:54pm | report spam | close Reply |
PNGs Huge?

spotbug beat me to it, but I'll second that if your PNG conversions were bigger than your GIFs, you did something seriously wrong. Heck, they use roughly the same image compression algorithm.

I certainly would like to see GIF die, but I don't see it happening any time soon (and I had no idea that MS didn't support PNG on Windows--what're they smoking?)

As for NS 7, I suppose it's their attempt to run away from the version 6 mess now that Mozilla is really getting usable. I'll stick to Moz personally, but I'm probably going to move the lab I work at to NS7 once Moz 1.0 is finished and Netscape does a release of it.

joltguy
Mac Enthusiast

Joined: May 2001

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05/22, 10:23pm | report spam | close Reply |
So many Moz users!

I'm surprised at the number of professed Mozilla converts on this thread! It's just gotta be MS hatred that's fueling people to turn to this. It seems much slower than IE on my system... I love the speed that the Chimera project is progressing at, and I see lots of people cheering it, but even that doesn't render pages as fast as IE (again, on my machine -- iBook 600). The only real contender on OS X in my eyes is OmniWeb. The only thing that keeps me from using it exclusively is it's relatively lame Javascript and CSS support. Constant errors. Also, the Aqua controls are nice, but since HTML FORM controls are now customizable via CSS, there should be an preference to toggle this on/off. I like to be able to view sites *exactly* as the designer intended. So far, IE comes closest in this arena.

MacNN.com Reader
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05/23, 02:51am | report spam | close Reply |
Netscape7 is looking good

It could be a little faster and there are still some gui quirks but functionally it's complete.

It would be nice to see Micorsoft get off their a** and update IE. It's an embarrassment to the largest software company in the world that IE is the most feature-incomplete browser on the Mac.

How hard could it be? We're not asking for innovation Micorsoft, just copy what the other guys are doing and slap your corporate image on it.

MacNN.com Reader
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05/23, 06:53am | report spam | close Reply |
IE should be updated soon

And once it is, all of this discussion is pointless. It will once again become the hands-down best browser on the Mac platform, just as it did when IE5 was originally released.

MacNN.com Reader
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05/23, 07:03am | report spam | close Reply |
re: Netscape7 is looking

It's an embarrassment to the largest software company in the world that IE is the most feature-incomplete browser on the Mac.

It may be (in your opinion) the most feature incomplete, but it does have some nice features that the other browsers don't. I find it's Scrapbook and Page Holder features very handy. If I could just get that Search tab to use Google, I'd be ecstatic. If you're an eBay addict, the Auction Manager is another goodie. It's also got a very nice Print Previewer.

MacNN.com Reader
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05/23, 10:54am | report spam | close Reply |
IE, Omni, Chimera, Moz/NS

Several clarifications to what's been posted:

IE:
IE for OS X has not advanced since 5.0, which is now a couple years old. A great effort at the time, but I've found it to have just as many glitches as OmniWeb. It's also less configurable, doesn't block ads, and doesn't really support Aqua.

OmniWeb:
I hope you guys are running the sneakypeek releases. If you're using OmniWeb 4.0.6 as a benchmark, then yes, it did have a lot of rendering problems and was slow. Version 4.1 has been fast and reliable for a *long* time now in sneakypeek releases. I've run it full time since about peek 20.

Mozilla/Netscape:
The great advantages here are that Mozilla is perfectly standards compliant (so if we can get people to code to Moz, it should work in any browser on any platform), it's cross platform (a godsend to everyone on other platforms), and that it's relatively modular (look at what AOL is doing with embedding it). Netscape is Mozilla, plain and simple, with a lot of AOL/Netscape branded stuff layered on. Not much point to it, really, but it is *identical* to whatever version of Mozilla thy base it on. For those who hate the downloading, try Mozilla RC2 - they finally added a download manager to Moz/Netscape!

Chimera:
Ah, this is where things get interesting. These guys took the rendering engine (the standards compliant core) and simply put a native OS X front-end and UNIX backend on it. This makes it *fast*, standards compliant, and it inherits a lot of cool features from Moz (like tabbed folders). However, it is *very* incomplete, but looks the most hopeful for a great OS X UI, standards compliant engine, and innovative features (like tabs!).

the Rebel
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05/23, 04:37pm | report spam | close Reply |
Chimera

Chimera:
Ah, this is where things get interesting. These guys took the rendering engine (the standards compliant core) and simply put a native OS X front-end and UNIX backend on it. This makes it *fast*, standards compliant, and it inherits a lot of cool features from Moz (like tabbed folders). However, it is *very* incomplete, but looks the most hopeful for a great OS X UI, standards compliant engine, and innovative features (like tabs!).

I agree that Chimera has a lot of potential and the guys working on it are doing a great job, but everyone seems to be overstating the separation between Chimera and Mozilla. Chimera uses a lot more of the Mozilla codebase than just the Gecko rendering engine. The UNIX back-end that you refer to is from the various Linux/UNIX ports of Mozilla with some tweaks to it for OS X compatibility; this is the same back-end being used for the Mach-O builds of Mozilla. The OS X front-end obviously has a lot more original code, but it is still being somewhat derived from the Mozilla codebase. Chimera is part of the Mozilla CVS tree; it is a Mozilla project. Last but not least, you have to also remember that Chimera is being developed by some of the same people who are developing Mozilla and Netscape. It is not some totally separate group.

These guys deserve a lot of credit for what they are doing, but it makes no sense to give them praise while bashing Mozilla at the same time.

0hwgray1
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05/23, 07:42pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re:Radio?

I got the radio to work just by clicking on the icon. However, the service is apparently not meant to be Mac-friendly. You can access all of the channels, but you get only samples of whatever song is being played. However, there�s a note saying that if you use Windows, click Here, because there are further services available, full service, presumably, being one of them.

the Rebel
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05/24, 01:11am | report spam | close Reply |
Re:Radio

You must be using Mac OS 8-9 because Radio totally does not work for Mac OS X due to the fact that there is no RealPlayer for Mac OS X.

Someone needs to talk to AOL/Netscape/Spinner about using Quicktime instead of RealAudio.

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Netscape posts Netscape 7.0PR1 for review

updated 11:45 am EDT, Wed May 22, 2002

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Finally ...

What's the difference?

Netscape

Which to use?

Re: Which to use

hey thanks netscape

Try Chimera

Re: Try Chimera

Good for Netscape!

Nifty

Hahahaha

Re: Hahahaha

AOL, PNG, MSIE

OS X UI?!?!

Netscape 7

PNG? Are you crazy?

ST II

Mozilla & Netscape

too little, too late

Integrated ICQ?

Re: Integrated ICQ?

AIM and ICQ

I'm pathetic (attn: ster

IE still rocks

Slowwwwwwwwwwwwwww

Menus

chas_m

spitting fm h***'s heart

Radio?

Net's c***

PNG is smaller than GIF

PNGs Huge?

So many Moz users!

Netscape7 is looking good

IE should be updated soon

re: Netscape7 is looking

IE, Omni, Chimera, Moz/NS

Chimera

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Re:Radio

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