It's official! I give up.

[timechange]

...on supporting Netscape 4.x that is

I finally uninstalled Communicator 4.79 from my machine last night and installed Navigator 6.2.2

sniff sniff I thought that day would never come.

[LeeUmm]

now if only everybody would do that

ever since i re formatted and installed xp i haven't reinstalled netscape.
i still may do it when i start a new site for a client though.

[monster]

Try Mozilla.

Like Netscape, but minus the ads and stabler.

http://www.mozilla.org

Its the same back-end, its the same dev Just read about the project.

[Dogma]

What ads?

Actually, NS is a slightly more polished product. Mozilla is a proof of concept. In order to release it to the "general population" AOL Time Warner Netscape cleaned up Mozilla a bit and added some stuff. I can't remember exactyly what it was, I have the email on my other computer.

Apparently, NS6.5 (or whatever they end up calling it) will be based on Mozilla 1. I can't wait.

You want one good reason to go with NS? The loading screen

[EHG]

Once upon a time there was a duck who totally supported the underdog. He held out and used Word Perfect for years and years until finally conceeding that MS Word was the better program. He refused to use Internet Explorer and remained dedicated to Netscape Navigator even using Messenger for his email client. Reasonably satisfied with his internet experiences using NN 4.7x he held on and he held on even as the content of the internet advanced and NN didn't. He held on and he held on because NN (aol) kept promising a completely new browser which promised all kinds of new features and was to be totally complient with the newest standards. HE HELD ON AND HE HELD ON -

HE WAITED FOR THREE YEARS AND THEN AOL/NETSCAPE HAD THE AUDACITY TO RELEASE NN v6.0 AND REFER TO THAT BUGGY PIECE OF GARBAGE AS A BROWSER. EVEN THE BUGS IN NN v6.0 HAD BUGS!

Apparently NN's bugs must have been malnourished too! NN 6.x still uses approx 33% more resources then I.E.

That was it the duck through in the towel installed I.E.
5.5 and is now USING I.E. v6.x which I believe to be an EXCELLENT browser!!

NN had their chance and THEY BLEW IT - If NN was still an independent company I might just might reconsider and be willing to try their product in the future. However of all the major companies my opinion of AOL is that they are $%#&*%$# whereas Microsoft are only $#%*.

IE v6.x = :weyes: NN v6.x=:sick:

[stu42j]

The main things that Netscape adds are a (pretty crappy) spellchecker and a AIM client. It also has lots of links to Netscape.com pages with ads - there are not ads in the browser itself. The other difference is that the Mozilla.org builds are usually far ahead of the Netscape version in terms of features and (sometimes) stability but they also have debug and test functions not needed by end users.

Reading community sites like mozillazine.org and slashdot.org, I see a lot of demand for up-to-date mozilla builds without the Netscape added stuff and geared toward end users (optimized without debug and tests) but Mozilla.org has consistantly refused to provide this need. I have just started a project with the intention of providing these types of builds to the user community.

BTW, the mozilla spell checker (based on the openoffice spell checker) is coming along quite nicely.

[timechange]

haha...funny.

You guys missed the point.

As a web developer I had to always maintain compatibility for both IE and Netscape. These two basic players of the web browsing wars had always several versions and incompatibilities. It was never a matter of 'upgrading' but a matter of support towards the end customer.

What I meant is, that I will no longer care if Netscape 4.x cannot handle CSS etc in terms of display. If it shows fine in IE and NS 6.x that's fine with me.

Opera is a great and fast browser, BTW.

[EHG]

The entry page to my site states:

NOTE: This site has been optimized for viewing with I.E. 4.5+ with a screen resolution of 1024 x 768 or higher.

My attitude of the small minority still using Netscape LET THEM EAT CAKE!!

[sillyalien]

Originally posted by timechange
What I meant is, that I will no longer care if Netscape 4.x cannot handle CSS etc in terms of display. If it shows fine in IE and NS 6.x that's fine with me.

Opera is a great and fast browser, BTW.

I second that thought.

[monster]

Remember:

IE loads up when windows loads up and running the OS your somewhat running part of IE. XP Pro takes up nearly 100meg of Ram

It then goes back to the law suit and if IE is required in Windows or if you can choose and so on and so forth.

[Gadget Girl]

I have always had all 3 browsers on my system to cross check the way the sites look. I just don't like how some java scripts don't show up in Opera, besides that, I like it tons!

I have NS 6, IE 6 and Opera 6 right now on here. I was using NS 4 along with it, I help someone out with a webring. Once the webring requirements changed, I no longer had to check the sites with NS 4 and I was so happy to remove it!!

Sara

[Still Shady]

I wish NS4 will vanish quickly... but I noticed schools are still using the damn thing... which is lame!

[Robo]

When I make a site, I make it as XHTML compliant as I can. I look at it with IE, NS6 and Opera, and if my page is XHTML compliant, it usually shows up fine in those browsers except for maybe some table columns which I then fix.

After that, I open NS4 and laugh at how screw up NS4 shows the site. I do make the site functional in NS4, but making it look pretty is NS4 is not that high up in my TODO list.

[jkeller]

Originally posted by timechange
...on supporting Netscape 4.x that is

I finally uninstalled Communicator 4.79 from my machine last night and installed Navigator 6.2.2

sniff sniff I thought that day would never come.

I support NS 4.x -- as plain text.

It's an unfortunate fact of life to leave it behind, but no need to get too broken up (no pun inten-- wait, I take that back). It's more important that you can hope that your visitors aren't too emotionally attached to their environment. That's never easy...

Personally, I keep a copy of 4.08 installed as a just in case (why that particular version? It was a requirement of a relatively recent contract). It still comes in handy when someone wants extra reassurance. Otherwise, NS 6 is the way to go.

Congratulations, and welcome to the club, timechange!

[jkeller]

Originally posted by EHG
EVEN THE BUGS IN NN v6.0 HAD BUGS!

Apparently NN's bugs must have been malnourished too! NN 6.x still uses approx 33% more resources then I.E.

Actually, NS 6.2 is a lot nicer than 6.0 ever was. True, though, there are still some bugs. A point that I made recently elsewhere on these forums is that Netscape/AOL benefits from a stable codebase that's constantly being improved (Mozilla), and can choose when to create a point version. They get the benefits of bug fixes for the core (HTML rendering is fiendishly complex) and can focus on the value-adds.

I'm not a big fan of the corporatism of AOL, but my choice of browsers isn't a political statement. I use both Mozilla and IE 5 (I don't like 6's new-and-improved security holes) and like them both. It's a luxury to be able to have both installed, but I think most Web developers should (Mozilla/NS are much better for stylesheet compliance, and thus should be the first and not the second pass for compatibility checks in regards to CSS).

IE is still faster, though Mozilla is improving. I saw major improvements in the last daily build that I grabbed, from last Thursday -- and I do a lot of DHTML-heavy programming.

Monster is correct, too: IE is pre-loaded with the system and so starts faster. You can do the same as an option with Mozilla ("quick start" or something like that? it's the bit that shows in the clock area of the task bar). But at least it's an option.

As for resource consumption, I'm sure that a good many of those in Mozilla's case are consumed by the debugging code. In NS's case, there are extra bits that are loaded for the same reason as IE is Microsoft's pet: it's a great way to cross-sell to paying AOL services. But that, in the end, is the coolest thing about Mozilla: it and its spawn bring some choices back to the browser game.