I had the preview release and had to dump it. Now that I installed XP RC1, I have not had the probs with IE6 and so far am happy with it. I hate the sidebar on Netscape browser and am glad it's not used on IE. As far as the media player comments, I have lost alot of respect for Real Networks and will give Windows Media Player a fair evaluation.

Alright 5 days and all these post "=stale"
Where is it? I figured it would have slammed out the door by now.
I will check back in a day or two. Its a shame no releases of it are posted anywhere. Is it the one in rc2 xp ? I havent really had time to look.

hopefully it was flushed, I don't look forward to the latest and greatest microsoft windows eXPloit applications like most win f**mins do. I just hope the exploits in this version only target themselves, and not me. I want my damn bandwidth back.

What does IIS have to do with IE? I'm assuming you're referring to Code Red and it's siblings. Just don't see the point of your comment.

I liked the Smart Tags, and Personal Par, and the Contact's. there fore i'll keep the old copy.. MS should have added a way to disable it not remove it, there is no difference betweek 6.0 and 5.5 now!

IE is probably doing the right thing when they also created the left panel just like Netscape Sidebar. However with Netscape, the developer/company is able to create its own Sidebar Tab. Don't know exactly what is the major feature of IE6.. resizing images? Well anyway IE6 stability seems to be as good as IE5. But the really great news at this time is N6.1, not only innovating but also improved performance and stability. Try the beta of 6.1 and wait for the news.

I may be in the minority here but the left panel/sidebar is the first thing I get rid of. I see no use for it whatsoever given the fact that all it really accomplishes is reducing the visible width for web pages. Why do we have a Buddy List?!!? in the browser? Surely this should be in a seperate program, same goes for the media player.

Personnaly I don't use the sidebar in IE, but hey its been there since IE5. I just disable it.

Most of the netscape/Mozilla sidebar is just annoying in my opinion. Mind you, I've though that about most of the IE side bar (which by the way has been there a long time).

The only part of either I like is the history, which Netscape used to hide away at the bottom of the tools menu.

Compared to the dead and dying Navigator 4.x, Netscape 6.1 is a cut above as a browser. But to label it as anything magnificent or wondrous shows a complete lack of communication with reality. In terms of HTML 4, CSS and other W3C recommendation content that browsers can display. Netscape is woefully short in several areas. If you want to design a site that is the best you can visually conceive and execute, Netscape still leaves much to be desired. Evn Opera 5.12 (which is the worst of the 3 major browsers) can display a greater range of CSS1 and CSS 2 content than Navigator can. So, what does that mean exactly? What that means is that the debate between designers and users is not well-served by the still unfinished status of Netscape 6.1.

If you think that the magic bullet is just around the corner, then don't expect any salvation from the Mozilla camp just yet. In fact, a bug in the Mozilla 0.9.3 installer basically disables the "View" menu in Windows 2000 systems. The Mozilla developer's philosophy is, "So just erase the old version and install 0.9.3 clean... it worked just fine for me..." Not to mention that every attempt to run Netscape Mail before the reinstall crashed all browser windows, etc. Oh, and Mozilla won't let you automatically switch themes on the fly anymore.. hmmmm

What about not being able to move or resize the address bar...? What about not having any full-screen mode (IE 4+ and Opera 5.x have it. In fact, Opera can use the full 100% of the monitor's viewing area). How much screen space gets wasted from Navigator's toolbars (which can be resized - whoops, the address bar won't show up until you until you open a new browser window). What else? You never get asked where you want to save a bookmark when you create it; you have to organize them later....

Netscape 6.x will be a great browser. But does it "Rock!". No. It still only wobbles somewhat eagerly Ò_Ó

IE 6 running under Windows XP RC2 wipes the floor with Navigator 6.1

I like this person! He is right in every way, thank you for wasting your time so I didn't have to. =)

The only feasible reason I can find to convince myself the reason why Netscape is the way it is and will be is (probably) because IE is made by MS, who already has all the trade coding secrets and can do virtually whatever they want with it, including the whole "shell integration" bit.

Maybe Netscape is being held back by something in the programming world that we don't know about, but it looks to me as though they are trying to make the whole browsing experience "look" like a non-MS browsing experience. This may not be a bad idea, but I personally hate the way their buttons are all gay and stupid-looking, and the fonts are _NEVER_ right.

They have to step back and say "okay, MS set a standard in how the web should look.. we have to follow it..." but they should improve it -- make it like MS did with the whole CSS and DHTML support. Sure, NN6.1 is way cooler than NN4, but the tables STILL look the same. On my website, I have tables that look b****en in IE, but in NN, they are all grey and never-changing.

Anyway, I'm babbling on here, probably for no reason whatsoever.. I just like the fact that I can talk about something that I feel strongly about and get a response. =)

What? You think NS 6.1/Mozilla is lacking in standards?
How much HTML, CSS etc. do you write? Because I do almost everyday and 99% of the time if there is a problem it's because IE hasn't implimented it correctly.

Chances are if some bit of CSS is working "correctly" in IE and not in Mozilla then it's not written to standards.

Mozilla IS far from being a complete and perfect browser and has pathetic XML(what little experience i've had with it) support.

This is a follow up post:

Every single piece of CSS coding that I use in the 1600+ pages for my website is CSS2 straight off. The only MSIE-specific code I use anywhere relates to the color of the scrollbars and such, which is only applicable in IE 5.5+

I don't let Frontpage or even Dreamweaver handle my CSS coding. Everything is done in TopStlye 2.0 and that specifically enumerates the differences in CSS-level coding for the different elements. So, your charges of "non-standard" this and that are about as far off the mark as George W.'s abilities and qualifications to run the country (not to mention the lack of a popular mandate.. sigh!).

No matter how close Navigator may or may not be to being finished, there has never been a version of MSIE that could not display the most current form of HTML and CSS correctly at the time it was available for download. Complain all you want to about "bloat" (which is meaningless when 40GB HDs are $140 - do Mac users complain that their PSD files take up 20X more space than JPEG files...? No. The quality is worth it. Same difference here)

In another vein - do you seriously think that Apple would have made any serious quantity of iMac or iBook sales with only Navigator 4.x or some version of Netscape betaware as their #1 browser? Since a lot of Mac users run in mixed environments and are clients of Exchange Server 5.x, the lack of proper LDAP support in Netscape 6.x for what has amounted to 5+ years since the Mozilla project was first announced would effectively left all those users unable to access their email accounts.

If Navigator cannot catch up to MSIE within the following 6~8 months, its role as a niche player in the browser wars will all be assured.

yup... ditch any side bar or poppie upie thing that comes in front of me

MS didn't set the standard, they rape standards. W3C sets the standards! If Microsoft wants to add stuff, fine by me, but first start by implementing what exists in their browser.

About your tables: first look at your code before blaming Netscape/Mozilla. IE is far more forgiven for badly written code so saying it displays in IE doesn't prove anything to me.

I've got 3 links for you:

http://www.mozilla.org/n...emos/tocdemo/rights.xml
http://www.mozilla.org/n...ugdemos/books/books.xml

http://validator.w3.org/

You can validate the 1st 2 pages with the 3th link. They are both "well-formed XML". Both don't display in IE5.5 SP2. I'll check them in a couple of days with IE6 but as far as I can tell, IE has even more pathetic XML support than Mozilla.

Could I get an example of things that don't work in Mozilla but do in IE? A sample page would be nice. Please validate it with the w3c CSS validator. If it's validated and doesn't show well in Mozilla, then I'll believe you.

You do not need to organize your bookmarks later. In stead of Add bookmark, use File bookmark. It allows you to "file" it where you want to.
Don't say something doesn't work just because you couldn't find it. It's been like this in Netscape since I don't know how long.

I have been having a very good experience with this latest version of IE6 beta with one exception. For some weird reason my scroll wheel function has stopped working. I say weird because there are three other browsers installed on my system and the scroll function works just fine with those as it does with all my other apps such as Word 2002 etc. I re-installed my mouseware to no effect. Has anyone else experienced this problem and if so, what, if anything were you able to do about it.

COOL! Try it out! Fast, stable!

I could download it (not from you, of course) and it is fast and stable.

BUT:

NS6.1 has not been officially released!!!
So the download file have just been in their ftp directory for testing purpose during few hours.
I hope you will re-post NS6.1 tomorrow in betanews with a valid ftp path so that many people could enjoy it.

Bah, Netscape sucks. Why run it when you have IE??

I have 6.. I hate how long it takes to load and what's with the Java thing? I don't like to load down my comp, as I use many resources with many programs all at once as it is...

Is 6.1 better?

Men, try it and see!!

Hey, man, with NN6 java started with NN, now it's starting only if you load a site with it!

Try it out!

Wow! You were right.. Netscape has terrifically improved NN from their Version 6 to Version 6.1 PR1 (which I'm running now). I like it much much better!

How come I don't see anything about Netscape on betanews?

Sure, I like to read about news and stuff, but the MS bit is getting old.. Add some resistance! Support Netscape for their (better) recent work!

Who says 'we' have IE. Haven't seen IE on Linux yet. AFAIK it only runs on Mac and Windows. The Solaris version is even worse than NN6.
NN6.1 is a step in the right direction, but the latest nightly mozilla builds really rock.

Netscape has been reposted.

Nate Mook
nmook@betanews.com

I am running 5.01 SP nothing and it works just fine thank you very much. Unless version 6.0.1 does something very special I can't see bloating my system any more than it is already. The content that I am able to view with my present config does serve me well. Unless someone knows a reason why I should upgrade I will stick with what works.

Actually IE 6 is faster then 5.x

Agreed.

My question is when is Microsoft going to get off its a** and impliment GOOD .png support? I'm tired of IE displaying the wrong shade of color and being unable to to transparency correctly. Mozilla can handle .png just fine so MS shouldn't have any trouble getting it to work.

I dream of a day where I can use PNG files with transparency so I no longer have to use the decrepit .gif format.

outlook express has like not changed at all.
all the new features kinda sorta are stinky.
they can keep it

I can tell you right now that OE has been updated, I don't know what, exactly, but I can tell you that it was.

that was a haiku!

ok maybe not but it sounded like one

Noon Sense Comment = A typical comment by CPUGUY

I think the only OE change was to make it skinnable, and follow the Luna style like IE. Haven't heard of anything else new.

from the readme that is installed with IE6 beta:
============================================
OUTLOOK EXPRESS NEW FEATURES IN THIS RELEASE
============================================
- Virus Protection Feature

Virus protection is the answer to renewed interest in the threat of
e-mail viruses. It blocks programmatic sends and lets users specify
if they want to open attachments.

- 64-bit Outlook Express

Outlook Express will run in 64-bit mode for users of 64-bit hardware
and the 64-bit Whistler operating system.

Wow. Look at that. Information gained through READING.

I hope they fix QuickTime IE6b2 diasbled QuickTime. That get annoying, fast. Hopefully it was just a mistake and they aren't trying to kill QT for WMP.

Or it could just be a conspiracy to make people not buy from Apple, after being unable to see all the deoms....

If only they would get rid of Quicktime and go WMP, Quicktime sucks hardcore

I think Quicktime and Real are better products.
Windows media does not support.
1. Smil
2. No indexing of content.
3. no event streaming support.

WMP has very lousy codec to compress video.

I just found out by a letter from microsoft , That our content if to be streamed on WMP8, We need to upgrade our servers to .net and that will set us back about 1 million dollars.
Also from my IT guys WMP8 indexes your audio mp3's and sends it to good old microsoft.

who is the good guy now.

I think Quicktime and Real are better products.
Windows media does not support.

1. Smil

WRONG.

2. No indexing of content.

WRONG.

3. no event streaming support.

WRONG.

WMP has very lousy codec to compress video.

WRONG.

I just found out by a letter from microsoft , That our content if to be streamed on WMP8, We need to upgrade our servers to .net and that will set us back about 1 million dollars.

WRONG.

Also from my IT guys WMP8 indexes your audio mp3's and sends it to good old microsoft.

WRONG.

who is the good guy now.

Certainly not you, troll.

OWNED!

I know they broke QuickTime, but then QuickTime came out with a fix that made it all better. Try looking at their site for the fix.

You prefer Real? I haven't even got RealPlayer installed these days. The startup times were too long, the little theme tune when you started it was nasty, the spoken adverts before radio streams were annoying, the interface had a nasty habit of folding up....

Personally quicktime seems by far the most solid to use. I have no idea about it's technical merits, but all I want is something that works when it's supposed to, and it does....

dude... you have issues

A little bit of argumentation would be in order. Just saying WRONG isn't going to work for me!

I have my Links bar visible at the top of the browser next to Help. Every time I install a new version of IE, I have to go through the links list and rearrange everything so my choices appear. I DON'T WANT MY URL LINKS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER !! If I want them in alphabetical order, I'll do it manually.

That never happens for me... Must be some incorrect setting?

It always happens for me too, and it doesn't matter what version of Windows I'm using (95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP). Whenever I install a new version of IE, it always rearranges my links into alphabetical order. It also adds links back in that I previously deleted. The links it adds back in are all Microsoft links. :-P

You will all love IE 6, I certainly do, its very fast, nice looking. All I want in a browser really. And it does wonders for the OS too. Since you are upgrading the OS and IE at the same time now. Windows is now built around IE :-D

Hey Yepee yeh yeh yeh!!!!!!!!!

Yeah IE6 is very cool. It is even better with Windows XP.

Agree XP and IE6 are great. Question of which version of IE6 is final? The Beta IE6 is 2530 and the XP RC1 is 2505; probably too close to call.

"removing the much ballyhooed Personal Bar and Contacts features after dismal tester feedback"

Sure it was a copy of Netscapes sidebar or whatever they call it, but I was looking forward to it :(

Personally, I'm glad that the Personal Bar is gone. I don't like it (I'm using IE6 build 2462) and I'll be glad to see it gone.

The Opera browser has allowed its users to reject 3rd party cookies for quite some time now. Looks like MS is playing catch-up!

Yeah but the Opera browser SUCKS.

why do you think it sucks

Opera does not support the W3C standard for P3P. You could block 3rd party cookies (as opposed to blocking all of them) as far back as 20-July-2000, when Microsoft posted the IE 5.5 cookie management preview add-on. It was never released as a production add-on because Microsoft decided to change it to comply with the emerging P3P standard.

When Opera decides to support P3P, they will be playing catch up.

It has poor JavaScript support for one

Well let's see, first and most of all because you have to pay + register it for that freakin' banner on the toolbar to dissapear (thank God for serialz!). Second, I think it's still slower to load Java applets/scripts compare to IE.

Opera does suck... I know I contributed to their ego by downloading it a couple of times, but I have to -- I'm a web developer!

If I look through my browsers, I see _way_ more people using IE5 or 5.5 more than anything..

I would like to see Netscape and IE both support the same layouts and page designs first -- THEN implement the whole personal stuff, like colored scrollbars and the personal toolbars cahoots.

I don't understand why they don't do this. It makes sense to me:
FIRST - Support all pages to view the same (layout, colors, et cetera)
THEN - Program speed, design efficiency, usability...
FINALLY - Then, get into the whole personal buy this icon, buy that icon, search with OUR sponsor icon..

Why do they do it backwards?

heh.. typo: I meant, if I look through my "logs"... NOT "browsers"

My sentiments exactly. At least now that both Mozilla and IE are embeddable you can to some extent cut back to just a basic browser and ignore all the new "features" that get thrown into then....

"In large part thanks to your feedback and input, Internet Explorer 6 will be the best browser in the market."

*They forgot this part of the quote* "Because if its not the best browser on the market, we will steal the code neccessary to make you think it is, that or beat you in the face repeatedly with an aluminum bat until you believe it is."

Honestly Im happy to see IE 6.0, I just wish more people would D/L it or the 5.X family, as a web programmer it gets annoying having to code for the 4.X family (some still want the 3.X simple sites). I wish M$ would take all of their bullcrap out, and make it a browser that is maybe a lite version, that is 2 megs big. This would allow all the 28.8k users out there the ability to download it. Im not sure what kind of fanatic would sit through a 25meg download on a 28.8k

208kb stop your b****in now i personally like the '0 downloads' in this post

Mozilla is an open-source web browser, designed for standards compliance, performance and portability. We coordinate the development and testing of the browser by providing discussion forums, software engineering tools, releases and bug tracking.

C:\Internet\Web\Browsers

0 Downloads 208 KB Freeware Windows 95/98/NT/2000

Ha! As a 28.8 user, I don't feel it's that hard to download 25MB -- it only takes a couple hours. Leave it on to download when you're sleeping.

Mozilla however miserably fails to comply with standards (read bugzilla sometimes) and it also fails to fix issues quickly (as that is touted as one of the great things about OSS) - read bug 915, it's been there for 3 years and noone's doing anything but yapping about if it's a valid bug or not (it is because W3C says so). So much for the great open source and fast fixes. In my opionion - if Mozilla.org was a regular for profit company they would be done at least a year ago.

I'm on a 56k modem that connects at 28.8/31.2kbps, and I downloaded about 25mb of IE6. It was quite boring, but generally worth it. I've downloaded hundreds of megabytes of software, bits'n'pieces, MP3s, and so on.

Mozilla's installer is 208kb... The actual browser is 8 megs.

And what about W3.org words that Mozilla is the most compatible with standarts browser?

And you can help to resolve those issues (can you help with ie?) coz it's opensource.

most compatible, least compatible, kind of compatible...you either are or you aren't and Mozilla will never be fully compatible because they've already said that there are bits they will not supports (from memory it's some CSS2 and DOM stuff).

As for helping resolve those issues for IE....of course you can...send in a bug report to MS.

Then by your same token, IE5.X IE6.X is only a 400kb download... Because like the post below said, it is just the installer, and I do have to program for the more popular web browsers, but the argument is to make IE 6.Lite, a lite version, because lets face it, and since your probably not a web developer (and im not slamming you for it) you probably do not care the stats of the most used web browsers.

Want to guess who it isnt?

Thanks

Yes, but how many people are willing or even able to do this?

For one -- look at you.. You're on betanews.com... Most people are like "duh, beta what?", "what's beta? a fraternity?"

They don't understand that advanced programming and design and all that good resource-deficient MS software is worth waiting a couple of hours for. Hell, most people don't even realize that new browsers mean a better internet surfing experience!

8mbs? Then tell me, why is it taking 32mb of my RAM even when it's not REALLY running, it's just the auto-load "feature" in Mozilla, so it can have those faster start-up times.

I can only speak for myself but, the Media Bar is useless.

I have mine disabled.

How do you disable it? I've been looking for a way to remove it and the only solution I've found is just telling it not to play media clips in the media bar when it asks me.

Internet Options / Advanced / scroll down to Multimedia and check mark "Don't display online media content in the media bar"

that will Disable media bar ;-)

Well oh my, I can't believe I didn't see that, I guess that's because I usually am UNchecking things

Hi i know ti said next week but does anyone have an actual date? and will this be a preview release or a full public release? they dont state if the beta testers will have a copy a few weeks ealier then the public which can sometimes be the case.

'Redmond rival America Online has faced numerous problems attempting to solve the issue, and many of its advertisements remain broken for IE6 users.'

Dammit, I'm going to miss all that wonderful advertising!

ms not only blocks that in the ie6, in xp it blocks aol software
in general . this is m$....

It doesn't block the AOL Software it blocks AOL's internet drivers that are incompatible with Windows XP

AOL should be sued for monopolicity and hogging all the hubs/servers in the United States. Poor babies still charging for an 800 number. Puhlease.

Now that's Clinton's fault! He gave AOL something like $800,000,000! Remember?

I remember this (and I'm only 19) from a few years ago, when it was big news that Bill Clinton was supporting the Internet and had some kind of grant or something of the likes to 'upgrade' the Internet and all this B.S.

And if I'm correct, it actually went to AOL.
(Can anyone verify this for me? I'm interested in knowing, but too busy, lazy, or whatever you want to call it to look.)

Thanks in advance. =)