7/09/98 - A Real Sneak-A-Peak At Communicator v4.5! NET.FAME: Jonathan Neuenschwander (This news item found on The Browserwatch News Page). The following links from the article are of interest. A sneak peak at Netscape Communicator 4.5 from CNET. A comparison of Netscape Communicator 4.5 and I.E. 4.0 runnning on Win 98 from CNET. Netscape 4.5 has some great new features in store and has made major strides in usability. The messenger E-mail client now has three panes like Netscape Mail used too (the CNET article states that the change is due to Outlook Express). Netcenter is gone and Collabra is part of the Messenger Client. The size of the download has been drastically reduced. The search ability within the browser has been enhance with the use of "like sites" which can get you to the information you need at a faster rate. You can now store your Navigator and Calender profiles on the server and share that information with other users (ex: managing people and resources for meetings). This version of communicator will be very impressive indeed. Note: Information for my comments was obtained from the CNET articles referenced above.
7/06/98 - I have revamped a page that I had saved on my hard-drive a while back. I have verified and revised all of the links and kept some of the original content (read the Note at the top of the page). This page will serve as my links page for the time being.
1/22/98 - Netscape has now made its Navigator Browser and Communicator Suite free. This will open the browser war to new battles considering that Netscape was able to hold on to a majority share of its market even though they charged for their product versus I.E.'s free status. Many people use I.E. because it is free and now they have another free choice in Navigator. Read the press release as provided by Netcape.
1/4/98 (Revised on 7/6/98) - I caught Microsoft messing with the code in January 1998. When you used Netscape 4.0, to go to the Microsoft site, you were redirected to HTTP://www.microsoft.com/microsoft.htm. The reason that a Netscape user was redirected is due to the fact that Microsoft chose to use its proprietary ActiveX technology and eliminiated the use of Java (at that time). The problem was that HTTP://www.microsoft.com/microsoft.htm had a graphic near the top that was purposely coded to look as if Netscape was unable to properly load graphics. The Microsoft team left a white space below to show where the ActiveX menu would have been but they added a graphic to the left of the Microsoft logo (this messed with the table for the length of the page). Microsoft was unable to show that I.E. was superior and had to manipulate the code in order to make it look as if Netscape was in error when it was not. Microsoft has fixed the problem and all users are now directed to http://www.microsoft.com/default.htm (I guess they finally listened after all - the page is displaying correctly in either browser - interesting how that happens). I have preserved a copy of the page from January without the graphics. The Winblows parody site was able to get the spacing correct with either browser. I have saved a copy of the Winblows page without graphics.
Check this out: In early 1997, I was surfing through the Microsoft Knowledge Base pages when I came across a peculiar thing. In the middle of the page was the message "Transfer Interrupted". I found that to be interesting so I looked at the source code and sure enough the message was encoded on the page that had been dynamically generated for my browser (Netscape 4.0pr2). I fired up IE and looked at the same page and low and behold it did not have the messed up code (strange). I notified Microsoft of the coding error and have not received a reply. I have seen this before but this is the first time that I have been able to physically capture this phenomena. I have also seen pictures that did not load for the same reason. The crazy thing is that these are simple coding problems and do not involve any advanced technologies.