Communicator: Massive Marketshare

Push Technology

Netscape Communicator  is more of a cross-platform product than Microsoft's browser. While IE is available for 16- and 32-bit Windows and Macintosh, Netscape supports these platforms plus various Unix platforms and even OS/2.

The Windows 95 version also includes a feature called Netcaster. This optional component allows news to be "pushed" to you, so that it appears without you having to ask for it.

Another feature of Netscape's browser is its support for 3D web pages. Unfornately, the software's VRML viewer has changed its appearance and feature set several times over the years and the newest version, in our view, is worse than it was previously. Right mouse button navigation of VRML worlds has been completely eliminated. This is progress?

Old annoyances remain. Communicator still saves local files in its cache with nonsense names (although you can decode them with the "about:cache" command) and inserts carriage returns when you copy a block of text to the clipboard, too. (Internet Explorer does not, by the way).
The "typical install" version of Communicator for Win32 is very bloated, requiring almost 35MB of disk space -- even without the Netcaster component or the Pro version's additions. The installer failed sporadically with a "could not decompress" error, although repeated attempts got it working. Beta 5 expires in August. Thumbs down from us for this one (unless the version of Netscape you are currently uses is causing your system to crash -- this release is much more stable than early Communicator betas). Wait for the final release.

The Mac beta 5 version fared somewhat better in our tests of 68K and PPC releases. Netscape skipped over a public release of beta 4 entirely on the Mac. The new release, which installs no less than 154 components for its "complete install" option on a Power Macintosh (IE3.01 installs 230 components, when installed with the mail and new option), adds several new features... and removes a few.

New is the QuickTime Conferencing component, which requires Open Transport 1.12 or later and support for Bitstream's TrueDoc. Also new are icons (and ugly ones they are) in the menu bar for bookmarks and Netscape tool components. Gone are the words "Window" and Bookmarks" from the menu bar -- replaced by the aforementioned icons; also absent is the attractive default marbled texture that graced beta 4's interface but slowed the program down a little (you can now opt for the same optional pattern available on the Mac's Find File dialog). Beta 5, like the previous Mac version, QuickTime and audio plugins, but continues to lack TrueDoc (available in the b5 Windows release), the long-promised integrated PDF support and the VRML 2.0 component currently shipped with the Windows releases. And, in case you were wondering -- yes, Netscape beta 5 opens web pages more quickly than Microsoft Internet Explorer for Mac does. Aside from a few minor interface complaints -- those ugly icons in the menu bar and the Netscape "N" logo in the right corner of the browser window that, inexplicably, is 30 percent larger than the one in beta 3 was -- we give beta 5 for the Mac a general "thumbs up," despite its disconcerting propensity to quit with Type 1 errors. And what's with the missing "N" icon when the toolbar is set to "Text only"?

May 21
Netcaster beta 1 for Windows 95 and NT is now available on Netscape's FTP sites, but beware: the program will not work correctly unless you install it to the default directory and enter a new User profile (even if you have already created one previously). We've tested it and recommend that you follow Netscape's advice. Merely by changing the default directory, one of our tests revealed lurking bugs in this beta 1 release. We must have seen a dozen error messages in as many minutes of testing. Pages not found, JavaScript errors, and other non-fatal errors abounded. We did not experience these problems when following Netscape's advice. Nor did we encounter any problems that caused the Netcaster portion of the program to crash, although Netscape Communicator b4, of which Netcaster is a component, isn't particularly stable at the best of times -- a trait we've come to expect from Netscape betas and "Preview Releases." To maximize your chances of success if you do decide to download and install the 8.6MB download, visit the Netscape Developer page for detailed instructions on how to install and configure Netcaster.

Screen dumps:

• netcaster-security.gif
• netcaster-tools.gif

We must confess to a certain distaste for the kind of "journalism" that seems to happen whenever you get a company like Netscape or Microsoft not only delivering the browser, but also the news. How are we to believe a Netscape-only "webtop" channel that announced that "Netscape is walloping Microsoft in the Push Wars." It smacks a little too much of the yellow journalism of the days of the publishing barons. We suspect that Net news services will soon realize, as the paper dailies did, that a news organization must at least display the appearance of an impartial and objective stance when reporting.

Netcaster beta 1:

• Summary: the Netscape "Channel N" hints at what others will probably look like: ever-present animation, sliding press-release pages, news tidbits and a TV channel changer metaphor.