Netscape 6 Preview Release 3, which became available this week at home.netscape.com, offers few features not found in Preview Release 2, but we now have a pretty good idea of what the final product will look like when it ships later this year. Netscape has not announced a release date.
eWEEK Labs believes that most corporate users will be very disappointed with the new Netscape browser, given the general weakening of the Netscape Mail client, which was the main attraction that kept companies loyal to Netscape Communicator 4.x despite its competitive shortcomings.
For noncorporate users, Netscape 6 offers a lot, including a very customisable, flexible and (mostly) standards-compliant Web-surfing experience.
Improvements in this release include additional themes, improved Sidebars -- including full What's Related information from Alexa Internet -- and increased stability. (The browser didn't crash during two days of testing, but we'd like to test it for a longer period of time before signing off on its stability.) This release also includes a feature that lets users sync their Address Book with a Netcenter account -- a nice addition for Netcenter users.
But users who would like to sync to another server-based address book are out of luck. And it looks as though Netscape 6 will lack the handheld sync capabilities that were in Communicator.
Netscape 6 Preview Release 3 Price: Free download Company: Netscape Communications Rating: 3 Stars
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