Interface
The first thing users will notice is the redesigned interface. The
interface in Netscape 6 is created in XUL(XML User Interface Language),
which is based on XML. This means that if you don't like the interface,
you can change it.
Netscape 6 includes a skins feature which the company refers to as "themes." By default, the browser ships with two themes, the new modern theme and the classic theme, which give the browser much of the same look and feel as Communicator 4.x. Netscape has started a contest to encourage users to create new themes for others to download. A number of themes are also available at www.mozilla.org.
At first glance, the new My Sidebar feature in Netscape 6 looks very similar to IE's Explorer bars. However, although My Sidebars by default include much of the same functionality, such as bookmarks, searching and related Web sites, they are based completely on standard Web technology, making it very simple for any site or business to create custom Sidebars.
We didn't like the new interface for browsing local directories on a system. In previous versions, this worked in the same way as browsing an FTP site, which made it simple to move up and down in directories. The new interface makes it difficult to move up in directories; we had to actually delete the information from the address bar.
A very strong feature in Netscape 6 is its integrated search capability. Like similar search engines in other browsers, it is simple to choose from a variety of search engines and results can be viewed in a Sidebar. More interesting is the fact that these search features are based on Apple Computers' Sherlock technology. This makes it simple search any site or engine, even internal intranet servers, from within the browser. On our test Mac, Netscape 6 detected Sherlock files and automatically added them to a list of search engines. It was also possible to add Sherlock files on Windows and Linux, although this was a kludgy process involving dropping files in a directory. We would prefer a built-in process for adding Sherlock files.
Netscape 6 did a good job of displaying most popular Web sites, but it had its problems, too. For example, it was unable to search within results on www.google.com. However, many of the problems we ran into came from poor standards support on the Web sites in question.
The standards support in Netscape 6 isn't perfect. It lacks full support of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) 2 and DOM 1, as a recent letter from David Flanagan, who has written several books for O'Reilly Inc., pointed out. From tests using pages created based on validation tests from the World Wide Web Consortium, Netscape 6 didn't come out perfectly, though it was still much better than IE, and better than Opera in DOM support.
Netscape 6's performance when rendering pages was much better than Communicator 4.7's, and also beat IE 5.5 in most tests--although both were so fast that the differences were negligible. Netscape 6's performance gain comes from the Gecko layout engine, which is the core of Netscape 6. The small, fast Gecko is a strong candidate for use as an embedded browsing agent.
A huge improvement in Netscape 6 over Communicator 4.7 is the new custom install option: Communicator forced users to take pretty much the entire browser suite. In Netscape 6, it is possible to install only the features that a user wants, for example, we could choose not to install Instant Messenger. Users had to install it in Communicator 4.7.
Also, Netscape 6 now uses a pluggable JVM (Java virtual machine). This means that users can choose to use JVMs already on their system, rather than use the default Sun JVM included with the browser. Netscape 6 also has good multi-language support.
A new menu option called Privacy and Security gives users access to the new cookie, password and form managers, as well as the standard security manager. The cookie manager, much like a similar feature in Opera let us view detailed information on all cookies, choose to remove and reject individual cookies in the future, and define sites from which we'd always accept or reject cookies.
The password and form managers are similar to the Auto-complete feature in IE 5.5, making it possible for the browser to automatically enter user name and passwords for sites and automatically fill in forms on sites. Netscape 6 implements this feature with encryption as an option, making it more secure then IE's Autocomplete. However, we still recommend not using these form or password managers for any core sites until they have withstood some analysis by the Internet security community.
The Mail component in Netscape 6 has seen several changes, including integration with Instant Messenger. If you enter a user's e-mail address in the To: bar, you can also see if that user is logged in to Instant Messenger and can then opt for real-time discussion instead of e-mail. It is also now possible for AOL users to use Netscape 6 as their mail application. The mail client also includes a very nice feature to define and use more then one SMTP server to send mail. Netscape has added a feature that lets users access Netscape Web-Mail accounts from the client.
However, not everything is good in the new mail client. It lacks the ability to handle secure Post Office Protocol connections. Also, a new feature in the browser's Address Book grabs the e-mail address from every message that a user reads. Although this can be very useful for finding a specific address, it can also be a hassle for users who receive hundreds of messages a day. The best option would be a filter to just save addresses from specific domains.
Netscape 6 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 Netscape 6 lacks the handheld sync capabilities that were in Communicator, which will be a big disappointment for current users of Netscape browsers.
Composer is still not the first tool you would consider to build Web pages. It's really a bare-bones HTML editor, but its new, pure WYSIWYG capabilities will suffice for quick-and-dirty edits on a Web page.
Netscape 6
Company: Netscape Communications
Price: Free Download
Rating: 4 Star
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