Netscape 6, they have droped the Communicator name, bundles net2phone, and real player along with instant messenger way to much stuff bundled for dust a browser download. On my Dual Celeron 533Mhz, 256 MB ram it is way slower than Internet Explorer. I would recommend it to others users that are currently using Netscape products, because it it way better than previous versions.

NS6 is the G.W.Bush of the browser world. A lot of glitz and glamour, but it just doesnt work for the little guys.

see subject

You'd think since Al Gore invented the Internet he'd be working on a browser...maybe he even worked on NS6?

Hehe

I, unlike the rest of this group, am really impressed with Netscape 6. First and foremost, I would say that netscape 6 shows a lot more Mozilla influence than it does AOL influence (pop away that AOL IM and you are good to go). Im sorry that for the "little guy" standards compliance doesnt seem that big of a deal. But when IE starts writing its own html for the rest of the world it makes it very difficult for the rest of us who are trying to code for multiple browsers. Standards compliance is very cool. The final release opens much more quickly than the first 3 releases, something I was very pleased with. Page loading rates simply destroy Internet Explorer (I opened betanews in ie, keyed over to ns6, typed in betanews and pressed enter. Netscape6 had the page loaded before IE, a rather large difference). As much as it is glitz and glamour, face it, skinz are fun. Clunky, I can see that, but useful, definitely. For a guy who keeps his browser open at all times, NS6 is going to be my choice for a long time. The only plus I see in IE is that it opens faster (sure, if you load all of Netscape at start up it would do the same).

I once was an avid Netscape supporter... but reality is reality. This browser can render fast as hell... but its clunky, isn't backwards compatible with the old Netscape, and frankly.. really can't go too far in public eye. Its memory footprint isnt too bad seeing as it doesn't increase exponentially with new browser windows like IE does. Oh well... maybe it'll get fixed up with time.... it has potential... possibly... if they make it compatible with previous web built for NS 4.x.

They will defenetly not. NS6 is standart compatible and not 4.x compatible.

Downloaded and installed with no problem, but when I tried to register (which is an undesired feature) I repeatedly got an Error msg about improperly formatted e-mail address, just wouldn't take it. Finally took hotmail address. Must have something to do with length of address is all I can think of.
Once activated, the program would open with half the page off the right hand side of the screen. Had to use Ctrl-Alt-Del to get out of it....repeatedly. Finally decided to delete whole program and wait for more of the bugs to be worked out.

I liked teh new features very much; however I've noticed that the new version uses about twice as much memory as Communicator 4.76 under Win2000. The fact that one can use different profiles for each news server is a pretty good feature, along with availability (finaly) of Java2 and several changes one can notice. Personally I disliked the "modern" skin but one can use the "classic" one which is just fine. I did have problems which I couldn't get around such as: Clicking in an URL in Messenger didn't get the browser to go to that page. Right-clicking and selecting open in new window brought a blank window and after that no URL was accepted.
I'll play a little more with v6.0 throughout the weekend but unless that I find some work around for this and a few other issues which have arisen I'll stick with 4.76 a little longer. It is positive to see a good set of features being available and a bug-fix release would make it a pretty good choice with no doubt. The issues above happened in a Dual PIII 500 with 384MB ECC memory under Win2000. JVc.

Well, if this were a first beta release, even a second beta release, I might be inclined to say that this is actually not too bad. But given the fact that it's final, it's really disappointing. Like so many other people have said, if I were Netscape (AOL), I'd be embarassed to let a beta-level project out the door as a final. I mean give me a break. Besides the obvious unacceptable memory footprint, it's fairly unresponsive and clunky. Additionally, not everything works properly. I see no reason to stick with NS6 when clearly they are basing it on Mozilla, which gets updated for more quickly than Netscape. And it doesn't have the bulls*** AOL components alongside. They'll have to do better than what they just rushed out the door for me to even CONSIDER moving away from IE.

I hear nothing but complaints. Noone cares if you're the most standards compliant browser if the damn thing doesn't run. 25megs compared to IE's 5megs and that's not counting in the PSM which is another (similar function already built into IE 5) 5megs. It also appears to have a memory leak because it's starts out taking 25megs but it can grow to more than 50 or higher. I wonder what IE 5 for the mac memory footprint looks like. I think it'd be damn funny if IE 5 mac was a smaller foot print than NS 6 mac... Any Mac users want to chime in.

Umm..dude. You are so bias. NS6 is a 25MB install if you install every component. The broswer itself if 7MB. IE is a 37MB install if you install all the components.

I think he's talking about memory usage, not disk space usage.

Sorry I should have clarified for those of you who hadn't talked to anyone else or read any of the other posts or even fully read my post.
When I said 25megs I meant memory not disk space. I thought that would have been evident when I mentioned 'memory leak' but I guess some people can't put 2 and 2 together.

On my computer, (which runs Windows Me) Netscape doesn't even work unless I restart the computer and it is the first thing I use. Otherwise, it just sits there and nothing happens. Also, when I do get it to work, none of the CSS properties work, like when you mouse over a link and the font color changes. I got it to work in the second beta version, but now it doesn't work on the final? And that idle start happened in all the beta versions I tested too. Can someone tell me if they are having the same problems, or if Netscape 6 is even made to run on Windows Me (which I think it does)? So far, I don't like it.

I have had the same problem with NS6 not starting at all.
It looks like it is trying to, but doesnt actualy open up as you said.
I sent a request for support to Netscape last night about this......lets see if their promise of 24 hr response comes true.

This looks like a nice browser if they ever get ir to work

I have the same problem running 98SE on a laptop. I tried the custom install twice--the first time I hung, and after that I got a page fault error message each time I tried to launch. I reinstalled a third time with the full install, thinking that perhaps I was forgetting something. Same page fault error = can't launch. I finally gave up and cleaned everything off my drive. I had at least three of the milestones working on an older 98 machine.

I had the same problem using NS6 with WinMe. It takes forever to load...if it loads at all, then it was super slow. Had to uninstall it. It was was pathetic. Obviously it is not yet compatible with WinMe.

I imported my bookmarks into Nyetscape 6 and half of the folders don't open up and some of the one that do, I can't scroll up. This is too bad since my bookmarks are alphabetical and Betanews..... Also, how come the page setup doesn't work? And what happend to print preview?

Now is this a beta or alpha release?

Well it hasn't completely crumbled your computer to a piece of dust yet, so it must be as high as a service release.

Has anyone else had problems when importing a large bookmark file? In netscape 4 I had about 250k of bookmarks. Netscape 6 took about 45 minuts for me to import them all and then it was laggy as hell going through them.
I think I'm just gonna use 4.x till they fix that...

Didn't get the installer to function so won't try it.
But why do they have to work with the mozilla engine? Must every piece of software be based on earlier code?
If it was impossible to continue with Netscape's previous engine, why not start over without heading into this forsaken Mozilla country.
Let Mozilla continue doing their thing, but don't expect us to suddenly become mozilla experts or fanatics on a holy crusade.
Are they going to keep sleeping in browserville or rediscover Gold in a new more proper location? They have to.

I think you're mildly confused. Netscape 6 is based off of Mozilla, yes. Mozilla is not old code. Originally the Mozilla project started off with the NS4 base but then efforts split and the NS4 base was being worked on and at the same time a complete rewrite. Eventually the NS4 base was abandoned and only the new rewritten core remained "Gecko" or "NGLayout". Please take a trip over to Mozilla.org and educate yourself.
Now unfortunately NS decided to go with pushing this peice of crap out before it was 100% and now they are going to pay the price with another big media hit. Statements like "NS 6 is more standards compliant than IE 5.0" as quoted by some major outlets is getting some chuckles from those of us using IE 5.5 and it's really going to kill NS if IE 6 hits before they can get their 1st service release out the door.

Hate to break it to you, but Netscape 6 IS more standards compliant than IE 5.5. It's not 100%, there are a few minor bugs which, IMO, should've been fixed if they weren't trying to rush this out for Comdex. But it IS definitely more compliant than IE, especially in the absolute positioning department.

I'm more than willing to take criticism/correction on my posts. Unfortunately I haven't seen any documentation that shows tag by tag the compliance of each browser (between ie 5.5 and ns 6) so I can't say either way which one is more compliant. I do know that all of the pages that I have coded that show up as designed in IE show up almost identical in NS 6. My primary point in the original post was the fact that everyone in the media is comparing NS 6's levels of standards compliance to IE 5.0 instead of 5.5. It's like they're all a step behind.

Both 4.x and new 6 are crashing if:
1) you run it at the same time with Photoshop 6
2) you run it at the same time with Winamp, while it plays from network drive
3) if you use CuteFTP 4.x

Erm, I play Mp3s over the network using winamp all the time while using Netscape (I'm doing it right now)... Never had a problem...

I happen to have Winamp, Photoshop and Netscape 4.76 running all at teh same time with no problem... Maybe some of your configuration files are corrupted. It may help to move your profile to another directory and create it again. Then copy back yours address list and bookmarks and you should get rid of most problems you may have...

It looks like layers do not work anymore. As a result all the standard layer-based menus, dropdowns don't work. Images are reloaded few every time page is refreshed, alignment of OS controls, such as radio buttons, submit buttons and text boxes are rendered different practically every time you reload the page. Truly "artistic" approach to the technical task - BRAVO - designers can use it as a feature from now on.

The most painfull fact is that thousands of web people, designers, html coders and so on, who usually spent 90% of their spare time to make things look OK on the old version of Netscape will have to stay up all night to make sure that this new monster (Go Zilla, Go !) is in the mood to render pages right.

In most cases it's rendering the pages correctly, according to the standards. Unfortunately most pages aren't written for the standards they are written in a subset of the standards with a sprinkling of do-it-our-way-IE and a whole cup full of we-want-to-make-s***-up-NS. Yes layers don't work in NS 6, why because NS 6 isn't really related to NS 4 in anything but name, it's not backward compatible and does not/will not support any of NS 4's old proprietary broken down crap. So yes web page designers will have to do some recoding, but if they were designers worth a crap in the first place it probably won't be to hard for them to do and you won't hear too much complaint.

It's not that hard. I was looking at it today. In a lot of cases, all you need to do is use the IE code, but put in a line like:
if (document.getElementsByTagName("*")) {
document.all = document.getElementsByTagName("*")
}

BTW, IE5 supports a lot of the W3C DOM syntax. SO instead of using document.all.foobar, you can use document.getElementById("foobar") both in IE5 and NS6.

So much for blaming Netscape's memory bloat on "debug code"... I just installed the Netscape 6 Final and after the default "home.netscape.com" page loaded, Netscp6.exe was consuming over 31MB of memory according to Task Manager. Going to the same page under IE 5.5 only consumes 5MB, and Netscape 4 shows 11MB.

The justification from Netscape advocates is that IE is integrated with Windows and all ready loaded. Be that as it may, Netscape still consumes gobs of memory and that's just not acceptable.

I wonder if you just run a simple application with an embedded ActiveX Gecko control how much memory it'd use?

Pretty close to the same amount.

On Linux it is pretty fast and stable, but the AIM client sucks =/ . On windows it seems to go pretty slow though =( . I reccomend it for linux users, but windows users can stick with IE or an older version of NS. It's just my opinion though...

...this browser cant even show images correctly, and the rendering engine is crap. Also, it takes about 30mbs of ram on my system.

pr3 was good
final is nice
m18 is better
ie 6 is best....:-))

I'd hoped that I could see a page in IE5, and see a page in Netscape 6, and they'd look the same.

I'd hoped that I could load up Netscape 6 without having to set special proxy information for my connection to the internet for just that application, when everything else just runs off the communal Internet Options control panel setting.

I'd hoped that Netscape 6 would be a faster load then 4.7631222354 (or whatever version it was on before today).

I'd hoped that Netscape 6 would be tighter code than the last version, and not be such a hog on the Hard drive.

...other than these obvious, and frankly deterring faults, I find it to be an improvement over the other version. Calling it version 6, however, is a mistake, in my mind.

holy cow netscape sucks.

I'm hoping this final will be better than the PR releases I have played with over the past several months. Those PR's were good, but I found that netscape still didn't render CSS, fonts, and other small things as well as it could have. Personally I think if those areas are fixed to render almost identical and as fast if not faster than IE, this will be a major kickstart for a oncestill?? almost dead Netscape. Although this still isn't as good as the Mark Anderseen releases of Netscape, this netscape is still better than no netscape even if *cough*gag*yak* AOL does own it now.

-Brad

Why did they skip the whole 5.x series? Is this a lame attempt to "catch-up" after stalling and doing nothing for so long? I guess if you can't keep up, you just up the version number so you can at least look like you've done something.

Because they feared that people would skip NS because it would seem IE was far ahead of Netscape. And because NS 6 is a GIANT leap forward and would be a couple of versions in the 4.7x serie, that is build on the old old old mosaic browser.
So yes. In some way it is a "lame" attempt to keep up with IE, BUT most importainly its to should the leap forward Netscape 6 is...
If it should be most correct they problebly have called it version 1. Because that is what it is. But if you want the "real" version 1 go to mozilla.org and wait for them to realase mozilla 1.0.
Because that is the browser Netscape builds there own browser from.

actually, i believe netscape 5 was based on the communictor 4x series that never got very far... though i suppose they could have named it 5.0 if they wanted, but as was already said, who would want a 5x when there are 6x browsers from another company, even though they are at the same level... same thing why prices are 9.99 instead of 10.00.... psychology.... go figure?!

There was a Netscape 5.0, however I don't believe it was released to the public. It was based on the MozillaClassic codebase, which built on the old code in 4.x, which was built on 3.x, which was built on 2.x, which was built on 1.x.

Microsoft did the same thing. Access went from 2 to 7. Word went from 2 to 6.

Well, it's a hell of a lot better than PR 1 where they forgot to add the printer button and crashed everytime you executed something, but in the end it's just like everything else in Windows. Change the cosmetic look and people start to drool and go "ooooooooooo.....pretty."

crash crash freeze freeze oh what a relief it isn't!

Nice browser. IM is a bit hit an dmiss and thats what i was loking forward to. On changing theme to one from theme park that i liked the IM disply window was no longer viewable and it only shows two Similes the :) and the :( when AOL IM can handle much more this feature is badly needed.

just like to add that there is no direct connect in the IM so you can't send pictures or tell when the other user is typing these are all important features that i use every day. I switched themes and it seems to be okay now and its working you get this msg if someone trys to direct connect with you username's software does not support sending and receiving IM images. Its not just sending images though it also tells you when the user is typing fix this and i am a netscaoe 6 user :) Don't and then i guess its back to IM as a seperate app

Yes...I think its good.
Infact one of the best browsers I have tried. It got anything I need of a modern brower. Good CSS and HTML support. Nice theme support (the best out there IMHO). Supports more OS's then any other APP out there. Got all my favorit plugins. Its STABLE. Yes. Its pretty darn stable. MUCH MORE THEN MOZILLA..
WHAT ? you might say.
Yes I mean that. I have been using mozilla as my main browser for around 4 months. Downloading new nightlies EACH day. And well...Mozilla might have ALOT more bug fixes in. BUT IT ALSO CRASHES ALOT more and have a bunch of new bugs. I have been using NS 6 most of the day on win2k (which rocks and also is pretty darn stable) and it havent crashed on me once. Not even on sites with complex java and html. So I can only recommend it for the "normal" surfer. As I said. Its stable, fast rendering and pretty darn cool to look at. (the modern skin ROCKS). And to all you that complains. Well. Most of you can basicelly go to hell. Almost everyone have complained about NS comming out to late. And now that its out. THEN YOU ALSO complain?!?!?!?!
What is the matter with you people...?
Netscape made a great cross platform product. Sure its not perfect. But neither is IE.....

Well... All in all. I think Netscape did a good job and this WAS the right time to get it out.

Mead is sweet, but bitter when paid for.

Didn't work on my NT4 at work. It's a huge program too! says i needed around 80megs to install just the browser with java! no mail, aim, realplayer, nothing else! The program itself is probably a lot smaller but a 100meg or so installation requirement for a full browser is still way too much. So you people really can't complain about IE taking up so much space, now. And I think the server's busy a lot or something. took me 12mins to download on my dedicated T1. So it should take a 56k a few hours. 28.8 users will probably have to download while they're out to work or sleeping.

i think it was so slow because it just got released today, and everyone is swarming the servers to download it.... in a week i bet it will fly again.... i got over 160k/s.... how fast do you really need?!