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Technical Notes
ZOIS Technical Note TN-2002-07-01
Author and Audience
This TN is intended for persons interested in installing and using
the latest (at publication) Netscape (version 6[1]).
Written by Martin Sullivan[2], ZOIS
Limited, Cockermouth.
Abstract
Netscape 6.2 was installed on a number of platforms and was
generally found to be unsatisfactory.
Introduction
As work was proceeding on a number of web-based projects it was
decided to download the latest commercial web-browsers to see how this
work would be affected in them. Aside from browsers from Microsoft and
various Open Source free/libre ones, Netscape 6.2 presented an
important new addition.
Materials and Platform
Netscape 6.2 and a variety of platforms including Linux (Red Hat 6.2),
BSD (Free BSD 4.2), Windows 95 and 98. All the platforms sported Intel
CPUs of various vintages.
Method
After an abortive attempt to use a downloading tool the CD Rom was ordered up from the Netscape site[1].
The initial installation from CDROM on Microsoft Windows 95 proceed
with out problem. On Linux (Red Hat 6.2) things were more problematic.
Both the instructions found on the packaging and in the "Read Me" file
were incorrect. One can change directory (cd) into <cd
mount>/unix/linux22/eng_us directory, but the Netscape
installer can not be run from the CDROM because it needs to write to
the file-system. This error is reported thus:
# sh netscape-installer netscape-installer: ./netscape-installer-bin: Permission denied
You need to copy to writable file-system:
# tar cf - . | (cd <writable place> tar -xf -)
The writable place requires 28.4 MBytes, and target directory 32 MBytes for default install (this is down on Netscape 4.7's 45.5 MBytes). Installation then proceeds normally and is unremarkable otherwise.
Since this was an upgrade to an existing and workable system it was sad to see that the new browser was unusable on elderly PC with `only' 25 MBytes of memory. The mozilla-bin process is loaded at 14 MBytes or thereabouts but spawns up to 6 similarly sized subprocesses at various times. This results in much swap space thrashing and it means that it is unworkable. In contrast Netscape 4.7 could be used although the machine was evidently under pressure.
On a much more well-endowed machine which had FreeBSD 4.2 as its operating system and a Linux compatibility package it was found that Netscape 6.2 required an additional GTK libraries (4.7 was OK). Although these could be loaded, further work on this machine was abandoned.
When running the thing out of the box, without further configuration, the user is presented with a `new' user interface consisting of a tabbed selection down one side which attempted to connect you to a variety of Netscape and AOL friendly sites, shopping and news as an example, whether you wanted it or not. The borders and buttons had changed too, presumably to emphasise the modernity of the product. It should be added that the tabs, the looks and the feel could all be reconfigured.
Netscape 6.2 had difficulty browsing the valid HTML found in
some pages of the ZOIS web-site. Some of the early pages
on the site use a mixture of BASE and A
(anchor) tags in an odd way. These formed links which have been
formally validated and could be used in all browsers since Mosaic but
appeared to break in Netscape 6.2. After toying with the idea of
submitting a bug-report it was decided that it would be easier to fix
the pages in question. This work was complete by the time this TN was
published although there are obvious implications for stuff viewed from
a web-archive[3].
Finally, the UK Government Gateway[4] appears
to reject Netscape 6.2 (at time of writing) based on the HTTP
"ClientAgent" string. It appears to have an issue with the way that
digital certificates are handled in this browser.
Conclusion
Netscape 6.2 does not seem to enhance this particular authors
web-browsing experience. It is unusable on elderly less well endowed
machines and seems to come with a large amount of commercially imposed
but irritating baggage. The author continues to use Netscape 4.7 and
wonders what the next Netscape (6.3, 7?) will bring.
References
$Date: 2003/02/16 09:54:29 $