Netscape 6.1 Released

Bug?

Submitted by nothing on August 9, 2001 - 04:43.

I'm just surfing around with the new version and then I see the headers on the top of one of the pages I went to

HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Thu, 09 Aug 2001 10:36:04 GMT Server: Apache/1.3.20 (Unix) PHP/4.0.6 X-Powered-By: PHP/4.0.6 Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=99 Connection: Keep-Alive Transfer-Encoding: chunked Content-Type: text/html f00

login or register to post comments

Java plugin

Submitted by StOne on August 9, 2001 - 08:16.

Just downloaded 6.1 and tookit for a test drive--now I'm having to get the Java plugin. I didn't select it as part of the package because 6.0 already had the Java plugin. Well, anyway. I detest Netscape and can't wait until it f***ing DIES. I only use it to see how horribly my pages display in it. I could go on and on but debating browser preferences is like politics or religion I guess. See ya's.

login or register to post comments

Dude, at least it doesn't lie when your code suck

Submitted by biolight on August 9, 2001 - 12:40.

Not to be insulting, but Netscape actually asks you to write decent markup. I use it all the time to make sure the code I'm writing doesn't SUCK. You can always validate, but ns4/6 gives you a real world test (to some degree). That's worth a lot. And if you read up on MS's latest initiatives (ie6, passport, office xp), you'd realize they're already trying to use their browser dominance to take over essential aspects of the internet (like gating, privacy, etc). IE is the browser that sucks, because the company that makes it is aggressively seeking market dominance at the expense of it's users.

login or register to post comments

Full installs available..

Submitted by djc on August 9, 2001 - 13:34.

I've uploaded the full installers for NS6 to the evolt browser archive. This is nice for sharing with other computers on a network install. It lets you still choose which third party apps you want to install too.

login or register to post comments

"Doesn't lie when your code sucks". bee eff dee

Submitted by StOne on August 10, 2001 - 08:26.

So Netscape doesn't display the page at all if you accidentally forget to close a table or something. Yep. And I do read about MS' attempts to monopolize the marketplace; and I think alternatives are all well and good. Just the same, it is Netscape that sucks. It simply does not have the capabilities of IE. And the company that now makes Netscape (AOL) sucks just as much as Microsoft. My two cents' worth; keep the change.

login or register to post comments

Some interesting feedback

Submitted by StOne on August 12, 2001 - 22:37.

So my opinion isn't universally appreciated. Again what can I say but BFD.The following text was in my email and I thought I should share it with everyone, since she did not care to post here. I have no further comment on this.

[MESSAGE TEXT]
looks like you said this: >> So Netscape doesn't display the page at all if you accidentally forget to close a table or something. Yep. And I do read about MS' attempts to monopolize the marketplace; and I think alternatives are all well and good. Just the same, it is Netscape that sucks. It simply does not have the capabilities of IE. And the company that now makes Netscape (AOL) sucks just as much as Microsoft. My two cents' worth; keep the change. << So when it sucks does it make you smile? Real bright comments there. Tell me, do you like Music Television? Do you like to watch MTV real LOUD? xo, your bitch @ Hotmail. PPS How can a markup language that does not iterate be called "code"? PPPS Does a debate consist of statements like "I detest" "can't wait until" "how horribly" and "I guess". PPPPS Does 7 com after 5? PPPPPS Why is there no PS first?

login or register to post comments

My apologies to the evolt community

Submitted by StOne on August 13, 2001 - 11:33.

I would like to apologize for cluttering up this discussion with that junk. I was annoyed that allowing my email address to be displayed led to this sort of thing rather than some kind of productive communication. My chagrin got the better of me. I have as little interest as any of my fellow community members in debating personalities, and had rather hoped that post had been deleted for having no place here.

Again, I regret my lapse of judgement and promise not to post any more irrelevant trash here.

login or register to post comments

Illegal Rendering

Submitted by urlborg on August 15, 2001 - 07:12.

Unlike our venerable Netscape 4.x, Netscape 6 has been blackmailed into adopting Microsofts 'broken-fast renderer' which both draws and displays completely defective html tables. This illegal rendering was made necessary becouse so many IE users have published broken webpages that will not display on browsers that follow the most basic rules of html looking for proper, cogent table definitions in the code before attempting to display them.

Thus, we have Microsofts deliberate hijacking of the most basic of html standards to thank for a new Netscape that cannot be used as a proofing tool. On the other hand, Netscape 6 does carry over their vastly superior bookmark organization system, but it still lacks many of the more advanced features of it'd 4.x counterparts like it's superior history system, advanced navigation and quick file saving, image display and size reporting features options and it's indeispensable view-source html troubleshooting.

Netscape 6 still does not support auto-update and this modularized java-thingy with the useless tray icon is just plain awful. Sorry, Gekko folks, but you still have an awfully long way to go to 'sell' the only fully CSS compliant web browser to those of us luxuriating in the well polished sophistication of NN!! The W3C and HTML 4.x (abspos DHTML) is a dog that never hunted, and XML is not far behind in the Edsel folder of history. The W3C have become little more than a Ford Expedition Limousine chop shop for the browser warriors, and it has completely failed as any sort of a 'standards' body. The prevailing full legacy, cross browser compatible, sub-html 4.0 is the defacto standard which these dreamy goofs have never even bothered to accurately define!

When will these guys realize that the trillion document web will never change to suit any dreamy new 'BSML' nonsense. It is the other way around! The web changes to suit the hardware and software that it needs to communicate with! 'HTML3.2-4.0 Transitional' have both evolved on their own to deal with the real software and hardware issues that users report, without any regard to shortcomings of those dreamy, loophole ridden older or newer DTDs. This is where the web is and will remain for the forseeable future. Sites that do not function within those parameters will simply be white elephants with even narrower audience prospects!

login or register to post comments

Tables and TITLES

Submitted by StOne on August 16, 2001 - 05:22.

I still haven't looked at 6.1 all that much but have noticed

it finally supports TITLEs

and one page where NS 6.0 would not display a couple of tables (nested only 1-deep inside a single-row table) 6.1 has no problem with it. (After going through the HTML with a finetooth comb I found nothing invalid there and have not yet figured out why NS 6.0 dropped part of that table.)

login or register to post comments

...etc

Submitted by StOne on August 16, 2001 - 22:56.

Finding a few more things that actually WORK in NS 6.1...so I will go so far as to say it sucks LESS ; ) than 6.0. But have already had it crash once, as little as I've used it so far, so I got to experience the long drawn-out error reporting process. (IE 6, to be fair, did crash once --months ago. The error-reporting went a lot faster there however.)

But I'm also finding more things NS still doesn't implement. I see it getting better, but it still has a long way to go.

And I couldn't agree more with urlborg about the W3C being a "chop shop" and having "completely failed as any sort of a 'standards body'".

login or register to post comments

Trans. gif's

Submitted by burnt on September 14, 2001 - 09:41.

Does anyone know why Netscape 6.1 (apparently not 6) displays some transparent gif's with white pixels where it should be transparent??? This may just be for animated gif's, I'm not sure, but I've seen it on multiple sites, and I'm currently trying to resolve this on the site I'm developing. Oddly only 2 of 8 buttons on my site exhibit this behavior, though they're no different and I've tried saving them with multiple applications.
Any help would REALLY be appreciated.

Biolight, you're basing your IE sucks on your feelings towards Microsoft's business/market practices... The fact is, Netscape isn't a quality product. I'm not particularly fond of MS, and I love and run alternative OS's such as Be and *nix (and OSX is certainly a nice step up from a technical standpoint from OS 9 and below, though I don't use Macs)... but when it comes down to a fast, stable browser that isn't full of quirks and bugs, between IE and Netscape there's no comparison. You don't have to run IE, but please let Netscape finally die. Every web developer I've worked with, front-end or back-end, feels the same.

login or register to post comments

No COMMENT in NS6.1

Submitted by StOne on September 14, 2001 - 11:30.

Anything placed between COMMENT tags will display on the page for some reason in NS6.1. This doesn't happen in NS6.0 or in IE.

login or register to post comments

Submitted by snipe12 on January 10, 2002 - 04:10.

Netscape is a nightmare. I hate it, 6.1 is much better than 4, at least stuff displays content like it does in IE. Maybe web developers should get together to create a virus that uninstalls Netscape and downloads IE for the user. KIDDING. My job would be far easier if Netscape was not around but hey that is the way it goes. Wonder why Netscape is still so much slower etc than IE. My thoughts, stuff both of them and use Opera. I downloaded and tried it a few days ago. Better than both IE and Netscape on loading speeds and it is a tiny little program.

login or register to post comments

trans. gifs

Submitted by eeblet on January 10, 2002 - 16:14.

like burnt, i've had trouble with transp. animated gifs showing up with white backgrounds. I've tried alpha & index transparency, I've tried adobe & macromedia..... anyone know a workaround? or should i resort to a browser sniffer?

login or register to post comments

The W3C is the nightmare!

Submitted by urlborg on January 13, 2002 - 11:30.

I still use N4, even though the experimental Gekko version is slowly improving. Opera is a wonderful revelation, but far too many bells and whistles. IE is not bad in a pinch, when a broken or oddball web page needs to be read, but it is still woefully inadequate for everyday use. With cable or a T1 connection, there is still no real significant difference in speed between any of the browsers.

I find the scripting WYSIWYG 'view-source' of N4 to be it's most indispensable feature, along with the Page Info analyser, script error analyser, frame to new window, full history display, unitized cookie file and advanced bookmark organization system. No other browser seems to offer these most basic and essential utilities. The others all have some good point or other but they simply aren't safe or utilitarian enough for an experienced hand coder to rely upon for everyday use. MS's OS-embedded internet products are just notoriously dangerous to a windos system's computing health, and only a fool with no significant OS build or software investment would risk using them.

The fact that the W3C decided to take a lowest common denominator, marginal approach to web standards and has become little more than a dreamland HQ, is the real reason why we have so many flagrantly defective products out there. By adopting a one-sided, myopic concentration on the syntactic format of the media, they have totally ignored the other side of the equation, to ingratiate themselves to special interests. Their 'supposed' standards' avoidance of any crucial specifications for rendering fidelity in relation to objects, entiities and definitions represents a total failure to support any web developer.

It's like the NTSC had come along and said:

"Here are and endless number of overlapping or entirely different 'sortastandard' alternative ways that a valid, modulated color TV signal may look from time to time, depending on it's producer - take your pick! A reciever's screen can be shaped anyway it wants, it's default luminance can be any shade, can display any sort of a spectrum of colors or grays, use any sort of aspect ratio, render anything anyway it finds convenient, assume anything about anything that's incorrect or missing, and substitute anything it wants to for anything it pleases, and display anything wherever there's space left over to show it, or simply ignore it!

We don't make TV's!

The reciever may show as many or as few NTSC sortastandards as it likes, none need to bear any relation to any other, and none need ever be backwards compatible with any prior system."

This is no way to run a railroad, an information highway, or even an etch-a-sketch!

While different OS's do pose serious challenges to the implimentation of some HTML functions, we still don' t have the equivalent of a "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval" for the various different evolutionary levels of "full standards compliance" by software vendors. Nor, any longer, do we have an acceptable standard set of gracefully degrading 'default standards' of any sort!

These arguments about browsers are not like blaming RCA because your TV show's talent always look a monochromatic pink! In the internet world, nobody seems to care much how anything looks! 'Works For Me' has become the rule.

login or register to post comments

Flawed analogy

Submitted by MartinB on January 13, 2002 - 14:06.

I may be wrong, but W3C don't specify colour profiles (a la Colorsync), or aspect ratios either - that's for monitor manufacturers to get right.

Neither are NTSC so loose in their standards that they allow TV manufacturers to interpret the standard signal such that the box which should have been at the foot of the screen actually appears half way down, and that actors behind sets are visible.

login or register to post comments

'In the Internet world'?

Submitted by MartinB on January 13, 2002 - 14:20.

Works for Me may work in your Internet World - the Razorfish world which mostly disappeared with the dot-com hype - but in the real world, I assure you it doesn't.

Try explaining It worked on my system to the client whose $1m site failed its business objective because you were too lazy to save the site not working for the number of users in the business case. She will think you at best hopelessly naive, and at worst intensely arrogant, because when she paid you to do the work, she expected that the site would look right.

After an episode like that, not only do clients fire agencies, but they also lose confidence in the entire medium, returning to media where their material will display as planned. Print, for example.

login or register to post comments

Re: "The W3C is the nightmare!"

Submitted by luminosity on January 13, 2002 - 21:47.

The W3C never say that they are producing standards, only recommendations. Yes, these are defacto standards, but they aren't actual standards.

You say that they avoid specifying ways in which things must be rendered. This is because they have the browser manufacturers working with them on the 'standards'. There muist be agreement there before they are published, so one assumes that they must KNOW how things should be rendered. It isn't the W3C's fault if the companies that pay to have representatives there, then ignore their work. (What is the point of paying for rights you don't use, anyway?) Furthermore, they have no power in the industry. Even if they did specify exactly how things should render, browser manufacturers would ignore these if they chose to, like they sometimes choose to ignore things that are already specified. If you want them to be able to specify things like that, and have manufacturers forced to adhere to them, figure out a way to legislate that over the whole world.

login or register to post comments