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Sci Tech
Netscape: Back in the browser battle
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Internet Explorer' may be the dominant browser on the PC desktop, but rival Netscape whose new, Version 7.0, is due next month, has its loyal fans. Anand Parthasarathy sizes up its `Preview Release-1', which became freely downloadable last wee k.
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THOSE READERS, whose Internet experience goes back to the early 1990s may remember a few fleeting years when the only Web browsing tool available, was `Netscape Navigator'. In those exciting times, the World Wide Web seemed like fabled Camelot... and the shining knight who reigned supreme at the Round Table was Netscape, cutting a swath across Cyberspace with a browsing broadsword, to help you reach distant, exotic web addresses. Then `Internet Explorer' entered the joust, wearing the colours of Microsoft and hoisting its pennant with an irresistible tag: ` I Am Free!'. By 1998 Netscape was acquired by the world's largest, and America's dominant, Internet Service Provider, America OnLine (AOL) and converted into a free tool. But it never regained its old position. For millions of users however, the familiar feel of Netscape ( with a touch of nostalgia for its pioneering role) mattered more — and they stuck with it, through four versions. Unfortunately the stablest, most enduring version, Netscape 4.7 was followed by version 6.0 — a sad, bad, product, obese and overblown in imitation of Internet Explorer, without any of its advantages. Netscape's loyal adherents felt betrayed.... Many who had no ideological hang-ups, kept both competing browsers on their desktops, but nevertheless uninstalled Netscape 6 and restored the tried-and-trusted 4.7 version. To others who practice this particular eccentricity, I bring tidings of joy: a new Netscape — Version 7.0— is in the offing. The final version is expected sometime next month. Meanwhile, a beta version called `Netscape 7, Preview Release 1' has become available for free download at ww.netscape.com, as well at a number of download services including www.cnet.com and www.zdnetindia.com where you must look for buttons or small banners announcing the new Netscape. The download is about 30 MB in size and at typical speeds achievable with dial up connections in India, takes around 60 minutes.
Do not believe some of the catty comments posted on the Net: the download is smooth; and there is no problem even if, like me, you want to have an escape route ready and don't remove any earlier version of Netscape you may be using. My IE is also working fine. After four days with the preview version of Netscape 7, I am almost ready to take the plunge and uninstall my copy of version 4.7.Having putting it intensively through its paces, this is what I have to share with readers about Netscape 7's pluses and minuses: The most useful new feature is something called `Tabbed Browsing'. This allows you to open a series of new web pages one after the other and have them nesting in a row of tab buttons, just below the menu bar.
The way to launch this feature is to go to the `File' menu; choose `New' and then `Navigator Tab'. Alternately you can open a tab by just pressing Ctrl + T.
You can switch from one tabbed page to the other — a great convenience when you want to compare the information in different websites. To make it easy to recognize the tabs, Netscape now includes a tiny icon of the web page along with the URL... a small feature but a great help. The other `goody' that comes with the new Netscape is `Click to Search'. You can select any word on a web page; right-click on it and select `Web Search' in the menu that pops up. This will immediately launch a search operation with a search engine of your choice. The default engine is Netscape.com. This is something you can always do by going manually to a search engine like Google or Altavista, but think how many key strokes that involves! Both these two features are said by some users, to be `inspired' by similar features in the `Opera' browser.
For the first time Netscape users can now save whole web pages, as they appear, complete with all graphics, rather than as mere HTML documents without the pictures. However, users of Internet Explorer will find this is no big deal; they have this facility in IE 5 and 6.
They are also unlikely to fall over themselves in excitement over another feature familiar to them — the ability to preview pages to be printed in the File menu before launching the `print command'. Very often, when printing a Web document, you end up wasting paper on a final page that contains just a line or two, with the copyright notice etc. A preview is a good way to eliminate this. Opening the `View' Menu and choosing `Full Screen' will enlarge the web page to stretch across the screen, over the Windows start buttons.
,,This feature is quite common in the VCD video players but is something new for the browsers. Netscape's Mail client has also been beefed up with some new aids: locating old emails by just typing in the sender's email address or subject line in a search mode; filter dialog boxes which help you to `blacklist' unwelcome senders ( can you hear Hotmail users saying "So what's new"?).The Preview Release Version 1 and presumably the full version of Netscape 7 will work on both Mac OS and Windows ( 98/ Me/ NT 4.0/ 2000/XP) platforms which have minimum 36 MB hard drive space and 64 MB of RAM. It is built around a technology called `Gecko' which can be directly traced back to Mozilla, the `open source' browser movement, currently bankrolled by Netscape's parent company AOL Time-Warner.
Four years after development began, the first release of the original Mozilla (1.0) is imminent. RC2 or Release Candidate 2 the advanced beta is available for free download at www.mozilla.org. Having sized up the Netscape 7 beta, some may feel a curiosity to try out the browser from which it was cloned.
In the week of its release as a free downloadable beta, Netscape has also redesigned its home page which now features buttons for Netscape Mail, RealNetworks the streaming media player, Net2Phone the Internet telephony service and the Radio@Netscape Internet radio tuner.
The link to the AOL service is of no interest to users in India. News from CNN and Time magazine and entertainment news and features from People magazine — all AOL group media operations are now highlighted. AOL seems to be saying: "Two can play at this game. If Microsoft can tighten its grip on the desktop using Explorer, Hotmail, MSN Messenger, MSNBC and what not, we have some arrows in our corporate quiver as well!"
Be that as it may, Netscape's new avatar is a sharp improvement on all earlier versions — a `must upgrade' for users of the browser.
And for those who are contended users of Internet Explorer, there may not be enough incentive to change. However if they are curious about what exactly the competition is offering, they can put the new Netscape on their machines without fear of a conflict.
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