Netscape 6: is it really a browser???

[CJ]

Hi,

I installed NS6 last weekend. The PR2. Installation took quite long, much longer than IE, but we can live with that. BUT than I started it. First there is this stupid popup which serves for nothing and has to be closed before going on. OK. I see the browser. better than NS4.7 but still not close to IE. I hear my COMP making terrible noises. NS6 is obvisiously a RAM hogger. I type in freesources.net. NOTHING HAPPENS. I type in http://freesources.net: nothing happens... I go look in the Prefernces under Proxy servers. As I am on a Cable host and I have to set proxy servers. Although all the settings were the same as in NS4.7 and all my other progs it wouldn't work. (Auto Detect) ok. I decide to set the proxy servers manually. FINALLY something happens. A pop up. I need to download something NS doesn't recognize. I download. Start again. AGAIN NOTHING. And this keeps coming till I close down the program and in 1 of the 2 cases the prog crashes on closure.

1. Is there anything to do about this or is NS just not available for ppl with proxy servers
2. How can I do to actually browse the net?

Christophe

[mjames]

Not sure the answer to your questions, but what do you expect, it's Netscape?

I have NS6 PR1 and haven't bothered to get PR2. It's quite odd... that's all I have to say about it.

[Aidan Bahta]

Remember, this is a Preview version. That means Beta. IE 5.5 beta was horrible...worse than Netscape 6 PR1/2.

Still, I dislike Netscape simply because it isn't part of the OS like IE is (which means its a lot slower and less reliable).

[eradtke]

Originally posted by abahta:
Still, I dislike Netscape simply because it isn't part of the OS like IE is (which means its a lot slower and less reliable).

That's actually one of the things I dislike about IE, is that it is integrated into the OS. It's a browser... it shouldn't screw with your system each time you upgrade it. But I'm living with it for now.

BTW, IE 5.5 beta wasn't so horrible (at least from my experience)... it was the full version that caused problems.

And, back to the original topic, I don't care much for NS6 either. I tried it out several months ago and it was slow. Pages wouldn't even load halfway... that's how slow it was. I hope we don't see this in Netscape's Gecko.

[Plebius]

I also don't like IE because it's part of the system. It's essentially a shell, i'd never routinely browse the internet in something directly linked to the OS. The potential security hazards with such a system are huge. I use NS 4.7 and it's faster than IE anyway. Plus I can't even figure out how to turn off javascript in IE, though it's simple in NS.

As for NS 6: I downloaded PR 2 and it's way too slow so I never use it.

[CJ]

ya, the beta of IE 5.5 was quite horrible BUT at least it worked... What's a brower when you're not able to browse with it???

Christophe

[Elledan]

On my system, K-Meleon starts and browses much faster than IE and NS, although still nothing beats NS on my SuSe Linux!

BTW I'm not planning to use NS 6.0 nor IE 5.5

[RussellG]

Speaking of Linux, i really have to get my linux box set up.

K-meleon or whatever looks pretty neat but I don't know if I want to download it, I'm happy with IE.

And I'd never use netscape, it's horrible, bloated and chuggy (is that a word?).

[Peter Hibbit]

I don't use netscape because the little hand looks weird...

Technical aren't I ?

[mkaufman]

I never tried the Netscape preview version...and probably won't for a looooong time I don't have time to download it anyway

[CJ]

Well I do have a Cable connection so that has only taken me 40 secs

Christophe

[Elledan]

Originally posted by Peter Hibbit
I don't use netscape because the little hand looks weird...

Technical aren't I ?

Hmm... in my opinion the little hand of IE looks WEIRD...

BTW in Linux, NS has a REALLY different 'hand'...

[mjames]

Originally posted by LuZeR
I use NS 4.7 and it's faster than IE anyway.

Definitely not on my computer...

[Aidan Bahta]

The reason IE is so fast (compared to Netscape) is:

1. It has a more efficent rendering engine
2. It loads on startup (Netscape loads as a seperate program)

I tried NS 6 PR2 on my 166MHz/80MB RAM computer...and it was a real pain. The computer started at something like 95% free resources...no programs open or anything. I launch the program. It took more than a couple of minutes just to load. Surfing was not good...noticably slower. The rest of my system bogged down too. Luckily, there weren't any errors/crashes.

But why is Netscape slower? Well when you have Netscape in Windows, you basically have Netscape and IE and Windows. When you use IE, your system juggles IE and Windows.

Elledan: It's impossible for Netscape to be faster than IE unless you have:

1. corrupted system files
2. IE slowerdowner (i made that one up)
3. Freaky efficient Netscape engine that you yourself made.

[Plebius]

Originally posted by abahta
The reason IE is so fast (compared to Netscape) is:

1. It has a more efficent rendering engine
2. It loads on startup (Netscape loads as a seperate program)

But why is Netscape slower? Well when you have Netscape in Windows, you basically have Netscape and IE and Windows. When you use IE, your system juggles IE and Windows.

Elledan: It's impossible for Netscape to be faster than IE unless you have:

1. corrupted system files
2. IE slowerdowner (i made that one up)
3. Freaky efficient Netscape engine that you yourself made.

Well I must have gotten IE slowerdowner then because Netscape is way faster than IE. Plus when Netscape crashes it doesn't bring my whole system down with it like IE.

[Plebius]

Originally posted by abahta

1. corrupted system files

Wait a minute... Doesn't having IE installed automatically make your system corrupt?

[Michel V]

Takin advantage of the connection speed @ the university, i downloaded & tried NS6 PR1 ...
And i was pretty upset. Although it wasn't SO slow for a not-even-half-done browser, first thing that stroke me was the exotic way it handled <br> tags, they looked like <br><br> or <p> since there always was 1 line inserted...

But i appreciated the weight of the file, only 5 megs ! Try to make something reliable, fast, with 5 megs nowadays...

At work i use IE on win98, and when IE crashes, the whole thing does. I hate the way it's integrated.
Anyone tried to copy-paste win95's explorer.exe at the location of win98's ?

Off-topic: Talking about beta version, i just copied a cracked beta 3 of flash 4 (i'm out of date, i know), and beta 3 doesn't launch at all... Hate beta versions.

[Elledan]

Originally posted by abahta

Elledan: It's impossible for Netscape to be faster than IE unless you have:

1. corrupted system files
2. IE slowerdowner (i made that one up)
3. Freaky efficient Netscape engine that you yourself made.

I can't compare both IE and NS on Linux since there isn't an IE version for Linux
And yes, NS is slower than IE under Windows on my system, but I don't care since I hate the bookmarkingsystem of IE

But one thing I know: browsing in Windows is a pain compared to Linux.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's Netscape under Linux!

[RussellG]

Stop bragging about your stable Linux environment!

[TWTCommish]

IE slowerdowner? Wha?

IE runs much faster on my computer than Netscape...IE may bring down Windows with it (not that often, though), but Netscape never lets me get more than 10 minutes without crashing...IE 5.5 was basically as bad, but 5.0 was brilliant.

[mjames]

Originally posted by Elledan
I can't compare both IE and NS on Linux since there isn't an IE version for Linux
And yes, NS is slower than IE under Windows on my system, but I don't care since I hate the bookmarkingsystem of IE

But one thing I know: browsing in Windows is a pain compared to Linux.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's Netscape under Linux!

Looks like we got ourselves another IE/NS argument going on.

To comment, how on earth is NS's bookmarking system better than IE's? I personally hate NS's system - that's one of the main reasons I don't use it as much as IE. You can't, (to my knowledge), sort the bookmarks by name... which is an important way to locate them when you have A LOT like me...

[CJ]

IE 5.5 has yet to bring down my system... It maybe crashed 2 times in 3 months and that was both while processing asp/cgi/php and when low on resources...

Anyway... I don't think there's possible a 'faster' browser than my IE5.5 because it runs on a 560kbs Cable line

Linux and NS maybe faster, but seeing many websites have problems being rendered in Linux on NS I won't possibly switch. Because I would be restricted than BY my browser and since I don't want to be restricted I would get mad.

Christophe - is still waiting NS6 to work - Johanns

[Elledan]

Looks like we got ourselves another IE/NS argument going on.

To comment, how on earth is NS's bookmarking system better than IE's? I personally hate NS's system - that's one of the main reasons I don't use it as much as IE. You can't, (to my knowledge), sort the bookmarks by name... which is an important way to locate them when you have A LOT like me...

It seems like we've a different opinion

Not to offend you, but you're one of the few people I know that like the bookmarking system of IE...

On the forum of K-Meleon, people were complaining about the fact that the creators have chosen for the IE bookmarking system, they all suggested to use the NS one.

BTW you'll find lots of people who despise IE on that forum as well

[Elledan]

Originally posted by freesources

Linux and NS maybe faster, but seeing many websites have problems being rendered in Linux on NS I won't possibly switch. Because I would be restricted than BY my browser and since I don't want to be restricted I would get mad.

NS on Linux doesn't have more rendering errors than NS on Windows. Not too many thus.

You better believe me, fs, since I'm more experienced with Linux than you are, with your 1-day experience!

[Hierophant]

Originally posted by Elledan

Looks like we got ourselves another IE/NS argument going on.

To comment, how on earth is NS's bookmarking system better than IE's? I personally hate NS's system - that's one of the main reasons I don't use it as much as IE. You can't, (to my knowledge), sort the bookmarks by name... which is an important way to locate them when you have A LOT like me...

It seems like we've a different opinion

Not to offend you, but you're one of the few people I know that like the bookmarking system of IE...

On the forum of K-Meleon, people were complaining about the fact that the creators have chosen for the IE bookmarking system, they all suggested to use the NS one.

BTW you'll find lots of people who despise IE on that forum as well

I personally love the fact that IE uses a separate shortcut for each favorite instead of placing them all in one HTML file.

This allows me to organize my favorites at the operating system level with simple drag and drop procedures, as opposed to editing a file.

It also allows me to send one favorite to a friend or family member without loading the page first, I can just right click on the shortcut and choose "Send To -> Email Recipient".

Finally I enjoy having my favorites on the Start Menu or as a Taskbar because then I can go to a page directly without pre-loading my browser.

I also bookmark my own pages.. These are stored in a separate folder unavailable from IE but it allows me to right-click on a bookmark and choose edit. This makes Homesite load, download the page and present it for editing. This improves site and time management.

What I would personally like to know Elledan is if your so experienced with Linux and hate Windows so much, why are you using Windows 2000 the majority of the time? You can't tell me that there is not a suitable program replacing any program or utility on Windows in the Linux world. There are HTML Editors, file managers, graphics editors, business applications and much more.