How in the world does this company make enough money to stay in business? As far as web browsers go, this thing keeps getting worse and worse.
It is so incredibly frustrating to build a website that looks great, and then view it in Netscape and see it as a broken, falling apart piece of crap. As I type this, the little animated flame smiley on the left side is expanding and contracting like someone's pumping air into it.

I firmly believe that if it weren't for isp's that distribute this garbage on cd, this browser wouldn't exist anymore. The average person doesn't know that they're using a piece of crap.

I too found the disasters of netscape after i made an attempt at installing it, after the download, i ran it, it began to open, and finally stopped at a whopping 25 MB of ram, then every window i opened thereafter consumed about 5-10 meg, my computer would have been maxed out before 5 windows, and since i open on average 10 windows, wow, id have been crawling...

hopeless garbage, no wonder MS felt the need to install IE by default on their OS, may have caused a nightmare in legal challenges, but its the best decision they have ever made !!

Aloha

yup went through that today
arghhhh took hours to get it correct in nutscrape

I am on a few sites doing a redirect saying you will not see the site hte way it should be
give a image (screen shot) so they get an idea
say get a real browser in a nice way and point em to some articles about nutscrape browsers
hope they upgrade and trash the junk
I am with ya
aargghhhhhhhh

I was hoping that the new 6.1 would actually work. Well at least it doesn't make my graphics flash like 6.0 did for no reason. There is a reason for that though, most of them don't show up. maybe by 6.5 you can actually see all of the non text parts of your site. The big POS :angry:, at least 4.76 worked, you just have to keep hammering it from a design standpoint.

I have to agree. Back when they were closer, the hard core techies took Netscape. I tried it, seemed to consume too much of everything *then*, took longer to load (startup), took longer to load pages (browsing), and overall, I couldn't stand it. I figured, so what if I'm an IE weenie, who cares. I used what worked well for my needs and still prefer IE. Now, as for the others (Opera, etc.), well I don't use them but am aware that they are scaled down instead of scaled up, so I got no problem with 'em.

I agree with you about the speed Chicken, I can start IE check a page go back and fix the code before NS loads.

Everytime I hear Netscape I want to pull all my hear out!!! :crying:
Although I have learnt how to deal with the many many Netscape issues during the years, it still keeps you from having the page you want. So finally, after all this time, I have decided that I don't care anymore! Yeah, I don't even look at my projects/sites in Netscape these day. I figure, if someone uses Netscape and the site looks bad or does not work for them, then that's their problem. They chose to use Netscape, they should suffer for it, not me!

PS. I actually added some code to keep Netscape users out of my sites. I sleep a lot better at nights now.

Originally posted by Mr. Amazon
Everytime I hear Netscape I want to pull all my hear out!!! :crying:
Although I have learnt how to deal with the many many Netscape issues during the years, it still keeps you from having the page you want. So finally, after all this time, I have decided that I don't care anymore! Yeah, I don't even look at my projects/sites in Netscape these day. I figure, if someone uses Netscape and the site looks bad or does not work for them, then that's their problem. They chose to use Netscape, they should suffer for it, not me!

PS. I actually added some code to keep Netscape users out of my sites. I sleep a lot better at nights now.

As a matter of interest, what do you do about older browsers?

And what do people think about the recent move to try and put links to browser upgrades on pages designed for older browsers?
In other words, trying to improve the consumer experience by educating the consumer. Normally, I'm against plug-in redirects on sites, but in this case I think I agree 95%.

Rgds

Yall must be some sick people...

For shame...

I agree, the whole 4.x series of Netscape was bad, but 6.1 is actually usable. I'm dumping IE finally. (I really hate it, it just gives up too easy on pages, and generally doesn't do "the right thing.")

Also I have my middle-click open-in-new-window button back! Yahoo(gle)!

I used to use Netscape 4.7 but no longer.
I mainly use IE 6 and Opera 5.12 now.

Originally posted by slade
Yall must be some sick people...

For shame...

I agree, the whole 4.x series of Netscape was bad, but 6.1 is actually usable. I'm dumping IE finally. (I really hate it, it just gives up too easy on pages, and generally doesn't do "the right thing.")

Also I have my middle-click open-in-new-window button back! Yahoo(gle)!

youre joking right ??????

Its too bad really because, Netscape USED to be the best browser out there, and a really good company with decent developers until AOL took it over. Then everything went to hell.

Microsoft certainly didnt need to bundle IE with there OS at that time, and I always found it really strange that a company such as AOL owning there own browser (Netscape) wouldnt bundle it on there CD, instead bundling AOL with IE, which would now be there competition. That always made me go hmmmm???

Not that I am some big conspiracy theorist or anything BUT that
allways made me wonder if Microsoft wasnt trying to bully there way with AOL, or if AOL wasnt somehow trying to do a
"I'll scratch your back if you will scratch mine" sort of thing to be bundled with windows OS's.
I mean Something happened, to have AOL to just flattly stop throwing the money and support into Netscape that it had before they took it over???

Not that I like Netscape or anything, I dont care for it now either, but it used to be a decent browser...

Netscape give me a hard time in website design, I've to keep checking with netscape 4.x and 6.x to make sure everything fits my design shown in I.E. :eek:

Booo to Netscape . :smash:

Originally posted by Honu
youre joking right ??????
nope :eek:

My all time favorite browser is Internet Explorer 5.0 on Windows 2000. It loads fast, and is very stable. All pages look the way they're supposed to look in it.

slade, if you really don't like IE, then I suggest that use try Opera. It is a lot better than NS and it shows the pages correctly most of the time.

As far as Netscape goes, they were never very good. I myself sometimes used it in the Windows95/98 times because afer a couple of months of running Windows (and installing tons of applications), IE would start crashing like crazy and there was really no other choice than to format and reinstall Windows. Also a lot of people use it because of it's email program. Noone uses NS because it works better, show pages the way they should be (hah!) or is faster.

Originally posted by sbrad
How in the world does this company make enough money to stay in business? As far as web browsers go, this thing keeps getting worse and worse.

Problem = AOL. Once they took over Netscape, it was all downhill. To me, the 4.x series wasn't too bad but still has major issues. Anything above 6.x is garbage. It looks like a kids game and doesn't handle web sites well at all. Final Grade = E

Back when Netscape first introduced Communicator, I wouldn't upgrade. Navigator Gold was a solid piece of software that worked perfectly and did eveything it should for the net of the time.

Eventually I moved up to Communicator and was pleasantly suprised by how good it was. I stuck with it as far as version 4.7, always claiming it to be far better than IE. A few years ago however I finally accepted the fact that Netscape were starting to make ubbish and IE was becoming a better all round product. With no small amount of regret I switched.

Since then (about 2 years ago), IE has continued to get better while Netscape is going from bad to worse. I don't even install it anymore as my feeling of disgust for it is palpable.

I really think as a designer that more people should forget optimizing for Netscape. I think it's a poor example to make that browser perform well by finding work arounds to it's shocking development. I don't feel it's my job any longer to make Netscape look good by busting my ass to correct their mistakes. If everyone pulled the Netscape code, and redirects from their sites I think you'd find the percent of people using IE (or any other browser that does the job right) would soar and finally throw the dirt into the hole they've dug for themselves.

I used to go out of my way to fix sites that looked bad in Netscape, but I've pretty much decided it's unfair to clients to double the development time of a site for less than 10% of the people that will ever see the resulting site.

Say NO to Netscape.

Greg Moore

Originally posted by akashik
...I stuck with it as far as version 4.7, always claiming it to be far better than IE.

Funny thing is I did the same thing. I would claim it to outperform IE every time and eventually I couldn't prove that lie.

Originally posted by akashik
...I used to go out of my way to fix sites that looked bad in Netscape...

I did the same and no longer do this as well. I'm not sure why but reading your response reminded me of an article I read only a couple of months ago. I could swear that I read somewhere that AOL was going to stop making Netscape as a browser. I believe they were trying to make it more like what people get when they actually have AOL service. More of a "fake" Internet where people could view just AOL sites. So this may be what we want afterall. If the browser disappears then no more making sites work for it. If anyone remembers that article or has a link, I'd like to read it again.

Thanks,

<OffTopic>
Speaking of AOL.. Has anyone else noticed that AOL Instant Messanger mutes the whole Windows sound when you're voice chatting and it has connection problems? I guess they don't know that sound cards these days can play multiple sounds at ones and muting the sound will interfere with all other sounds.

AOL truly has the worst programmers. We have yet to see a good and functional software from AOL.
</OffTopic>

Netscape does things the right way, it sticks to standards.. I hate version 6 though.. It's a piece of crap... I am a die hard netscape user, but I will NOT go past 4.73..

IE doesn't adhere to the standards as well as Netscape did, instead, it tries to determine what the designer was attempting to do and fix it before displaying.. That is why it's easier to develope for IE than Netscape.

People think it's the browser, but it's actually their code that is bad.. Good code will work in ALL browsers that stick to the standards.. At least from my experience...

One trick I use is to actually use Netscape as your main preview browser and if it looks right in there, 9 times out of 10 it'll look right in IE...

From my understanding, Netscape is dead.. Version 6 was just to satisfy contractual agreements between AOL and MS.. (correct me if I am wrong, this is what I heard on other boards)

As for me, I think I'll switch to Mozilla or Opera.. Though I might stick to my Netscape 4.73.

If you go past Netscape 4.7 you are in trouble. 6 is a joke. Dont they realize it takes 2 minutes for their software to start? Geesh. 6.1 looked promisin but it kept killing my Mac. i changed religions and went over to Explorer for the mac, and believe it or not, I love it. Even though I still hate Microsoft products...

that's right.... A O L the three most horrid letters in the industry. That's the problem right there.

On Browsers:

Can AOL finally handle javascripts?

I don't understand why people start to hate Netscape...
It's just a piece of software that other people like. Don't like it? Don't use it. I am long time Netscape user and don't like using IE. But I don't hate it or people using it and can admit that it's a good browser. (more or less :))

As a webdesigner I never had any real problems getting everything to work in IE and Netscape. Even when I was creating stuff with MS FrontPage.

I was a long time Netscape user and recently swithced to Opera because 4.7 was to slow on most pages. Opera is amazing. It's lightweight, all windows are contained inside, email and bookmarks are right where you need them in the sidebar.

Mozilla is also an amazing product with new cool features and extensions being added all the time and the load time decreasing with each release.

On my computer with 256mb of RAM Mozilla runs as smooth as I would expect a browser to. I usually have Opera and Mozilla open together plus a whole bunch of other software and hae no problems.

Yes, it doesn't work with everything, but it is also not finished yet. However it is the most standards compliant browser and becoming even more so.

I'm not sure if you were talking about Opera or Mozilla in your last statement, but Mozilla has been around longer than the others.. It's what Netscape was ORIGINALLY based on (watched some PBS thing that filmed the entire development of Netscape, which was funny because almost all the original developers left for other jobs afterwards because AOL was buying Netscape up)..

If you ever look at your server logs, you'll notice that every browser reports "Mozilla" to it.. Even IE.. Not sure if Opera does it of not, haven't had a chance to dive into Opera yet..

back in the day, I used to love Netscape and would not touch IE......however, ever since I began developing for the web, Netscape has become my worst nightmare, and it is the nightmare of web designers/developers everywhere....I disagree that good code will work in all browsers....minimal, boring code may work in all browsers, but try and do something innovate, and Netscape will not comply..... I have laid out some basic designs, which would not work in Netscape no matter what, I even spent 8 hours straight just trying to fix a background problem in Netscape.........I would love to dodge netscape altogether, but for some sites, that 10% of people is still an important segment of the market..............

I've had my share of problems with Netscape as well. I once would not use IE to save my life. Netscape was God as far as I was concerned. But after having a problem with an image not appearing correctly on the page only in Netscape I decided that was it. I still code for both because some visitors do still like to use AOL software but I don't use it for anything other than that.

As for the image problem, as simple as this sounds, by me adding a border around an image instead of it appearing halfway down the screen centered on the page it displayed at the top left corner of the page when loaded. As soon as I removed the border on the image, it went back to where it belongs.

Actually Netscape was dead WAY before Aol bought them out. Remember how looooooooooong 4.6 stayed? The damn software just never got upgraded. And when they did, to 4.7, all they did was add a "shopping" button. Lame.

And have you guys seen 6.0? It's so bad. Everywhere you see links to Netscape. Do a search, Netscape, click the shopping button, Netscape. Click the help button, Netscape. Damn annoying. Netscape has become Aol. Ads every damn where.

You folks think Netscape 6.0 was slow on the PC platform? You should have seen the horrible results it had on Macs..ugggh...they must have just used the same code......up to a minute for a browser to load on a top end Mac, they must have been mad drunk when they released it!

If your design looks bad on NS, just don't blame NS.
IMHO, If NS su*ks, w3.org will not accept them as one of their member.

I have alot of friends who could make a complex site using a lot of scripts and still looks good on netscape.

Aloha
to all you defending NS to the end
well let stats speak for themselves
NS has slid off the face of the earth pretty much

so guess that speaks for almost %95 of the users that NS sucks !!!!
so for the rest of the %5 great glad you like it enjoy slower times CSS redraw problems crappy NS taking over in later versions buggy crashy engine and the rest of its superior quirks ;)

Well i hope that this is the end of NS and double coding and loosing hours and hours of my time just because that DHTML menu wasn't working with NS . For now ill stick to IE.

Netscape is garbage.

Why on earth would you completely change the DOM from 4.7 to 6? And then even add global javascript variables like 'netscape'. Great fun. I hate Netscape.

And it's not a matter of not using it, like someone pointed out. When a client uses Netscape 6.1, and thier employee uses Netscape 4.7, I have to accomadate for both browsers which go about accessing the DOM completely different.

I would never buy anything from microsoft, but IE is the best.

IE 4.5 to 5 actually got waaaaay better, and even loads quicker.

Aloha
another nail in the coffin there java engine sucks has hard time with doing panos over 150KB starts crashing if the size is bigger than 1000 pixels also
yuck

Actually that bit about Java, I believe, was "intentionally" caused by M$ to kill off Java, that platform-independent language. M$ hated the "platform-independent" part like the black plague.

I like Microsoft and feel Gates did a great job to get to where he's at today. I like Internet Explorer, and hate Netscape. Previously I had merely disliked it, till AOL took it over, then my hate for AOL went to Netscape as well. However, I am concerned about IE soon not having any competition. Yes there are ones such as Opera and all that, but they arent at the same level. Will Microsoft start charging for their browser?

Aloha
not sure what ya mean by this ???
Nescape has the jaa prob ???
how could IE be involved in what NS did ???
curious ;)
Originally posted by Skeptical
Actually that bit about Java, I believe, was "intentionally" caused by M$ to kill off Java, that platform-independent language. M$ hated the "platform-independent" part like the black plague.

Originally posted by eclipsewebs
I agree with you about the speed Chicken, I can start IE check a page go back and fix the code before NS loads.

Well, please do not forget that it you're using IE on a Windows system, chances are many of this components were already loaded even before you actually launched it. So, of course, it's easy to be fast when your components are already here.

On the other hand, Netscape is a piece of crap :(

Originally posted by cyansmoker


Well, please do not forget that it you're using IE on a Windows system, chances are many of this components were already loaded even before you actually launched it. So, of course, it's easy to be fast when your components are already here.

On the other hand, Netscape is a piece of crap :(

---
...many of its components, sorry about that...