http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/30/technology/30STAT.html?pagewanted=2
November 30, 2000
STATE OF THE ART
Netscape 6 Browser: Mixed Bag
By DAVID POGUE
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Related Articles • Past State of the Art Columns |
HE popularity contest between Internet Explorer and Netscape
Navigator is one of the most intriguing spectacles of the digital age. Each
year, these two Web browsers appear in new versions, flush with features that
Microsoft and Netscape have unapologetically stolen from each other. In no other
industry do the two market leaders invest so much money and effort in their
products and then distribute them free.
After two years of programming efforts and six months of availability in free preview form, Netscape and its parent, America Online, released Netscape 6 last week in Windows, Macintosh and Linux versions. Unveiling a new version of Netscape Navigator now may, at first glance, seem to be a pathetic gesture. At this point, Netscape is like a mouse lobbing spitballs at an oncoming steamroller. According to the analyst group WebSideStory, 86 percent of the world's Web surfers use Internet Explorer. (Whether Internet Explorer's supremacy results from its being built into Windows, as Netscape says, or because it's simply better, as Microsoft claims, is another question entirely.)
Yet if any browser had a prayer of escaping the Microsoft Conquest Cemetery, Netscape 6 should have been it. For one thing, it has behind it the mighty marketing muscle of AOL and whatever corporate behemoths AOL may soon marry.
For another thing, Netscape 6 springs from a daring and desperate decision in 1998, when Netscape made its source code (the usually secret programming codes that underlie a computer program) available to anyone on the Internet.
The company hoped to harness the collective brains and enthusiasm of volunteer programmers worldwide, turning its flagship software into a collaborative, so-called open-source project. (The open-source phenomenon also gave birth to software successes like the Linux operating system.)
The result is an Internet software suite that not surprisingly primarily reflects the interests of the world's Web-page designers, meaning that it can understand every standard dialect of Web-page programming — HTML 4, XML, CSS, DOM and so on.
These names may not ring a bell, but if you have ever encountered an error message or bizarre layout when trying to view a Web page, then you can appreciate why it is important for a browser to understand these programming languages. Now that Netscape Navigator can interpret all of them, Web designers can, in theory, worry less that their Web sites will look right only in one browser or the other.
But if Web-page designers are mostly pleased with Netscape 6, ordinary mortals are in for a broad array of disappointments. The program is a memory glutton, hoarding 20 to 25 megabytes of RAM. (Abandon all hope, ye with 32-megabyte PC's.) Its speed is fine once you're online, but it takes nearly a minute to start up, even on fast Macs and Windows PC's — long enough for you to say, "I wish this browser were built into the operating system" 20 times in a row.
Once Navigator is finally ready to show you some Web, you may be surprised to discover that several popular features of the previous version, Navigator 4.7, have disappeared. The print-preview feature is gone, as is the ability to drag a Web site's address-bar icon directly into the Bookmarks menu. You can no longer copy or paste a Web address in the Address bar by right-clicking there, either. And you have to resize the browser window every time you begin surfing; Navigator doesn't remember how you had it the last time you ran the program.
The most alarming flaw, however, is that you can't highlight the entire Address bar with a single click. You must highlight the current Web address by dragging the mouse over it each time you want to type a new address, an oversight blatant enough to make you wonder exactly how much time the program's designers actually tested Navigator by, say, browsing the Web.
That is not to say that Navigator offers no new features. Netscape has cheerfully cribbed several of them from Internet Explorer. The program can fill out online order forms and registration screens automatically, saving you repetitive typing. Similarly, you no longer have to type, or even remember, the passwords for your banking and other protected Web sites; the browser can memorize and fill them in for you. (You can even establish a master password that unlocks all these other passwords, thus thwarting the evildoing spouse or co-worker who tries to gain access to your accounts when you're away.)
Unfortunately, the Netscape software-copying machine must have hit a paper jam halfway through the job; the rest of Internet Explorer's goodies are missing. For example, the Netscape browser still offers no "turn off blinking animations" option, one of the most glorious sanity savers in Internet Explorer. And you'd think that by 2000, Netscape would have caught on to the usefulness of Internet Explorer's Save command, which preserves a complete Web site on your hard drive so that you can reopen it when you're no longer online.
Fortunately, not all of the new features in Netscape 6 are secondhand. The program's new, sleek, metallic blue look is only one of many themes (coordinated color and icon designs) you can download from a Web site wittily called the Theme Park. If you like, you can choose a different theme for each mood swing you experience as you explore this new browser.
A more useful example is the Sidebar, an area at the left side of the browser window. A ladder of stacked file-folder tabs lets you choose which kind of constantly updated Web-page information you would like to see there: your calendar, stock prices, weather, joke of the day, news headlines and so on.
Depending on the size of your monitor, you can equip the Sidebar with 10 or 12 tabs at a time, selected from Netscape's 600 offerings.)
The results of Netscape's beefed- up Search command are listed in the Sidebar, too. You can jump to each listed site with a single click, without having to flip between a browser window and a separate search-results window.
The browser is the centerpiece, but Netscape and AOL hope to position Netscape 6 as an all-in-one Internet command post, along the lines of Microsoft's MSN Explorer. The Netscape 6 suite also comes with Netscape Mail, a central collection point for your regular Internet e-mail, newsgroup messages and even AOL mail. AOL Instant Messenger is built in, too, for the benefit of chat fiends; an improved Netscape Composer lets you design your own Web pages. Unfortunately, most of these programs are incomplete and inflexible next to their free or inexpensive rivals.
The browser also comes with the RealPlayer and Flash plug-ins installed, so that you can listen to Internet radio broadcasts and watch animated slide shows with no further setup. It also comes with Net2Phone, software that lets a microphone- equipped Windows PC make slightly sound-delayed, but absolutely free, calls to any phone in the country.
Thanks to its slow start-up time, its generous bug collection and its bad luck not to be preinstalled on every PC, Netscape 6 will not deal Internet Explorer a death blow, or even a splinter; the lawyers battling out the Microsoft antitrust appeals need not lose any sleep reworking their arguments.
On the other hand, the software has several powerful constituencies that will ensure it at least moderate success: Linux fans, corporations who can adapt the source code to their own purposes and international users (the browser will be available in 40 languages).
Furthermore, Netscape 6 is a key strategic weapon for AOL, which plans to incorporate it into all manner of gadgets (including the new Gateway-AOL Internet appliance). It's a good bet that the Netscape- AOL team is, at this very moment, readying a follow-up version that fixes the bugs and glitches. Until then, download the program from the Netscape Web site only if you meet all the requirements: 64 megabytes of RAM, a fast processor and a belief that almost anything is better than a Microsoft victory in the browser war.
-- Anonymous, November 30, 2000