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 TEST CENTER Netscape strikes out with Navigator 6.0 By Mike Avery , For InfoWorld Test Center November 26, 2000 ALTHOUGH THE Web browser wars between Microsoft and Netscape may be officially over, competition is still fierce. Key issues in the evolution of Web browsers in corporate America are increased stability, central control, and business-oriented capabilities. Given these strict qualifications, we weren't surprised that Netscape Communication's newest browser, Netscape Navigator 6.0, is not up to snuff.
Nevertheless, Netscape intruduces a few key improvements including XML support, support for open standards, and some open-source code. But the benefits of these are in the future. XML isn't really a viable option for most users and while open standards and open-source code are good, many Web sites are still using Internet Explorer-specific features. The benefits of open standards won't be realized until developers move beyond using proprietary Web extensions. Similarly, open-source code offers better stability once many people have examined and improved the code. Today, all we can run is the program being delivered. In the end, XML support is not a compelling reason to upgrade to Netscape 6.0 unless you have an immediate and pressing need to use XML. Most of the other enhancements to Netscape 6.0 aren't that significant in a business environment, leaving us with no pressing reason to recommend an upgrade to Netscape 6.0 and a product score of Good. In testing Netscape Navigator 6.0, we installed it on four machines, one a Windows 2000 Advanced Server, the other three Windows 98SE machines. The installations were a bit rough, with two machines having problems during installation. Rebooting and re-installing the product took care of the problems. One of the more interesting new features is the ability to customize the Netscape 6.0 installer. An ISP or company can set it up to display its name, its icons, add help files for its customers or staff. The customization package even put the software and customizations together in a format that you can put on a CD for release. From a business perspective, the biggest drawback in this release is the amount of fluff added. The utility of the AOL Instant Messenger (IM) can be debated, but more questionable are the tie-ins of the product to Kinko's copy shops, HP print supplies, and the offer that appears on the desktop for "Free AOL and unlimited Internet". Although users can disable IM, the hooks to install it remain. The other offers can be suppressed after installation. But we'd rather not install utilities that offer employees ways to bypass a company's normal purchasing process. Two new end-user features are themes and My Sidebar. Themes simply allow users to change the appearance of the browser. Navigator 6.0 is shipped with two themes, Modern and Classic. Modern is the default theme, and Classic looks like previous versions of Netscape. My Sidebar is a small vertical browser window that you use to store information and pointers of interest. The individual tabs can be disabled, and My Sidebar can be suppressed altogether if users don't feel it is giving them value in exchange for one sixth of their screen. The news client has improved, but we still found it cumbersome. When we subscribed to a news group dedicated to network management, we were given several thousand messages and no way to delete all of them in a single operation. The e-mail client was much better than the news client, but we still found it more cumbersome than Outlook Express or a good dedicated e-mail package like Eudora or Pegasus. One oddity that gave us pause was that the account set-up wizards and preferences menus didn't have their own help buttons. To access help for those screens, we had to close the screens, invoke help from the browser, and then re-start the wizards or re-enter the preference menu. This was annoying. Not quite as annoying was that each new help screen launched a new window, so getting back out of help could mean shutting down three to five windows. Overall, we'd rather the developers spent more time on stability than on new end-user features. While XML may become an important feature, we remain unconvinced that most companies will find XML compatibility to be an immediate, or even short-term need. There are enhanced features for dealing with cookies and for insuring privacy, but both Internet Explorer and Opera have similar features. Netscape Navigator 6.0 is a nice browser, with weak e-mail and newsgroup functions. However, many of its flaws are shared by the competition. In reality, there isn't enough competition -- or user input -- in this market area, so Version 6.0 is as good, or better than the competition. But this version isn't yet good enough to inspire us to upgrade . Mike Avery (mavery@mail.otherwhen.com) is a networking consultant based in Gunnison, Colorado, who has designed and supported networks of all sizes.
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