Netscape Communicator

Re: Size, stability, and market share
I sadly agree that Netscape is heading in completely
the wrong direction in almost all respects. Its more
bloated , its more buggy , although it does appear to
crash a bit less granted !, the unfriendliest interface
and at the moment probably has the WORST
rendering engine going . Any Web administrator will
vouch for the fact that NS is almost completely
disappeared from the Site Logs. In the Win32 World
its completely gone in favour or IE . The paradox is
that the Win32 version of netscape is actually quite
good ! The Linux version for sure is almost completely
unuseable (v6.01) and quite frankly an insult to the
linux community. v6 was a pretty poor effort but you
kinda let that by as an beta release ( even though it
wasn;t !) . Having the next release go even further in
the mire is quite unacceptable. Its maybe a sign of the
maturing Linux market that software of this quality is
no longer acceptable to us , many of us now require
good product for our day to day business. However
the death of Netscape as a force in the browser
market is maybe a good thing. Time for some new
blood and I personally find Konqueror to be already a
far superior product , even in it current "beta"
state.(1.9.8) It renders better pages, Has better core
features and useability. I dont need portal stuff and t
he likes forced down my throat. I want a browser and I
want it lean and mean and good at just that .
Konqueror wins hands down across the board. I
think that it is already better than IE in terms of
approach and speed and ease of use. Obviously IE is
more mature in many respects but I remember IE2 ,
even 3 .. utter pants !!!! We needn't be concerned
there . OK its maybe my personal preference (as a
user and an network administrator ) but I dont like
IE's (and indeed NS) desire to want us to use the
same big product for ALL net services . I just dont
see it . How many use Netscape for Email ?? exactly !
How many wish they didn't use Outlook .. plenty ! The
only thing I miss at the moment is the loss of some of
the all pervasive plug-in technology requirements e.g
Flash,Real etc. ( but even then its only because of the
annoying download page !!) But as we vote with our
feet that situation cannot last I am sure. Then you
look at how these products impliment features we
need on a regular basis . Take Print dialogues .. The
Netscape one is a poor unfriendly effort with no select
ability . IMO its a thrown together port of the windows
version where no effort has been made to make it
work in a native friendly way As a network
administrator i would NEVER give this to "users" . The
level of helpdesk support this would need would be
horrific !! Konqueror on the other hand is able to read
all the available printers .. including Network printers .
names . comments to lot. User friendly and ready for
the "user" desktop. If we want to see Linux move onto
the corporate desktop we have to reject NS and
embrace proper ported software. The King is dead ,
long live the King.

Re: Netscape v6.0

> Don't forget my friends:
>
> it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's
> pronounced "Mozilla."
>

Hmm- Don't you mean N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but its pronounced "Slow-as-crap-overblown-bloatware-that-crashes-all-the-damn-time-for-no-apparent-reason"???

When will there be a worthwhile alternative???

Re: Mozilla/Netscape is crap.
Admittedly, I have to agree. Netscape 6.0, so far, has been a mistake. It blatantly used the user base as alpha/beta testers for a product that was not production-ready. Massively huge and unstable in comparison to Netscape 4.76, it only succeeded in turning OFF people.

Sure, the interface looks nice and all, but, geeze, if it craps out half the time, and the other half of the time it has trouble rendering GOOD pages properly, then what use is it?

I do however, disagree with the ordering of SPEED and then STABILITY. It should be the other way around: Stability, then speed. An application that crashes faster doesn't do much for ya. :)

Re: Size, stability, and market share

>
> Nah, they've done some good work, it's
> just not been
> packaged very well. Look up Skipstone
> or Galeon
> here on Freshmeat, two GTK-based web
> browserrs
> which use Mozilla's HTML renderer and
> nothing else.
> Very responsive, less bloat, more
> fun.
>

well maybe GUI part is responsive but the HTML rendere is too slow. Netscape 4.7 its at least 50 times faster then famous gecko engine which then does not even support standards.I dont like M$ and IE but I would like to see IE on my Linux box then bother with slow 20 MB HTML rendere.

Mozilla/Netscape is crap.

This was hyped as much as any microsoft product, perhaps even more. And, it is probably one of the worst pieces of crap OSS ever made. I wanted this as much as the next guy, but its slow as hell, unstable, and bloated.

Netscape/Mozilla people might release an update that fixes a few bugs and adds more useless features (IRC client anyone? Wtf!) but why don't they learn from past mistakes and release a new version with what Netscape REALLY needs: SPEED and then, STABILITY.