Netscape 6: Enter the Gecko

By: Kevin Reichard
Monday, April 17, 2000 10:24:47 AM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/1734/1/

Reviewing the Next-Generation Web Browser

Like all good software, the new Netscape 6 is very capable of provoking some strong reactions. It certainly did with me.

I'm not going to pretend that I'm a fan of the new Netscape 6 interface. I'm not. I find it overdesigned and very inconvenient to use, with familiar tools scattered all over the interface, and there seems to have been a lot of change to the interface for the sake of change. The Netscape folks argue that it's a simpler interface with fewer buttons, and I suppose that's technically true; but it seems like a lot of important things, like easy access to bookmarks, was deemphasized in Netscape 6. (You can judge for yourself in the accompanying screen shot.)

And I'm not a fan of the current state of performance for Netscape 6: it's a beta that can be annoyingly slow and a resource hog. I know it's not good form to criticize beta software on a performance basis, but it seems like Netscape is actually slower than the alpha versions of Mozilla I had reviewed in the past.

Now, having said all that, I will admit that Netscape 6 will become essential software for every Linux user over the next two years. I'll even go farther and argue that if the performance issues with Netscape 6 are worked out, Netscape 6 has a very good chance of regaining some market share from Microsoft Internet Explorer in the overall Web-browser market.

The core of Netscape 6 is Netscape Gecko, a new browser engine that's also being positioned for use in a variety of situations beyond Netscape 6, including net devices, embedded devices, and set-top TVs. This engine contains no legacy code, and in our tests it did appear to render pages faster than older versions of Netscape Navigator. (Overall, however, this beta release is slower than previous versions of Netscape Navigator, proving that rendering pages is only one portion--albeit an important portion--of what a Web browser must do.)

And Gecko is Open Source, released under the Mozilla license. Open Source advocates can debate about whether the Mozilla license is a true Open Source license, but the fact is that Gecko is freely available and already being used in the embedded-Linux world is a good sign that Netscape 6 also has a great future.

The first beta release of the renamed Netscape 6 (gone are Communicator and Navigator, at least so far) is available for download. We downloaded it and installed it on two Linux boxes, one running Linux-Mandrake and one running Elfstone Linux.

Looking at the Gecko-Powered Browser

As covered earlier, the familiar Netscape interface has been overhauled. There is more screen real estate given to an actual Web page, and newly implemented is a My Sidebar section for favorite Web sites. Despite its appearance, My Sidebar works virtually the same as the Favorites menu in Internet Explorer, except that My Sidebar uses tabs that suck in dynamic content.

For instance: you could set up My Sidebar to regularly monitor the latest headlines from Linux Today, display a Buddy List to see who's available for online chat, and monitor your stock quotes. Netscape 6 comes with some tabs already preconfigured, but it's easy enough to add your own, and many Web sites will soon be sporting buttons that automatically add their content to My Sidebar.

Basically, the Netscape 6 interface is divided into three areas. There's a personal toolbar containing bookmarks, a link to your personal home page, and a link to your personal My Netscape page hosted at the Netscape Web site. A task bar on the bottom of the window lets you open the various Netscape components (Web browser, mail, calendar, et al.) and sports shortcuts to frequently used Netscape features, such as Tools and Channels. Finally, the minimalistic four buttons can be used to move between Web sites.

The URL Locator field has also been slightly changed. Instead of being used just for loading URLs, the field can also be used to enter search information. The search results appear in your main browser window and your My Sidebar field; it remains in the My Sidebar area until you perform another search, no matter how much browsing you do in the meantime. (No more going back and forth from your search page after performing a search.) The search is performed by Netscape Search, which contains the Netscape Open Directory. This directory, which is one of the more quiet success stories in the Open Source world, is the largest human-edited directory on the Web, and it serves as the core of the Google search engine, among others.

A more elaborate Search menu allows you to look for more specific information, such as phone numbers or e-mail addresses. You can choose which search engines are used.

Privacy is also enhanced in Netscape 6 through a Password Manager and a Cookie Manager. The Password Manager performs as advertised: it manages all the passwords for all of your different Web sites and stores the information in a secure file. When you visit a password-protected site, Netscape 6 will automatically fill them in when you visit a site. The password information is controlled by a master password, which you must enter the first time you access any password in a session. There are some limitations: Netscape 6 will store only the usernames and passwords that you specify, so for anything truly important you can keep the information only in your head. (Alas, the master password is not yet protected with encryption; that is promised before the final Netscape 6 release.) The Cookie Manager lets you control how cookies are set and modified each time a cookie is presented to your system.

There are some other small goodies in Netscape 6. In a time when the rest of the world (that is, non-English-speakers) are rapidly embracing the Web, Netscape 6 can now "translate" documents by linking to a Gist-in-Time Web page. This isn't a complete and thorough translation, but you can generally get the "gist" of what the page says.

Netscape Mail: Dramatically Overhauled

The mail module is perhaps the most noteworthy new tool in Netscape 6. It is also the biggest paradox: even though it looks fairly similar to the mail modules found in Netscape 4.71 and before, it's actually been overhauled and enhanced significantly. (Judge for yourself in the accompanying screen shot.)

The biggest change is that Netscape 6 now handles multiple mail accounts, including AOL Mail. It took us about 20 seconds to set up a new e-mail account, as Netscape 6 uses a wizard to guide you through all relevant data input for AOL, POP3, IMAP, and NNTP (news) accounts.

With multiple mail accounts come multiple "identities," where you can choose what information is sent with your mail. For instance, you may want to respond to personal mail from your business account, and you want the return address to be your personal-mail account. This is relatively easy to do in Netscape 6.

Mail also becomes more interactive. When you're reading a message, Netscape 6 can go on the Web and see if the mail's sender is online and available for instant messages.

Finally, the address book has been redesigned to be easier to use. Also changed is how Netscape 6 handles incoming e-mail addresses, and it's done in a clever way. Instead of automatically throwing all incoming e-mail addresses in your address book (which is the annoying default in Microsoft Outlook Express), the addresses are stored in a separate Collected Addresses address book. These addresses are autofilled by Netscape 6 when you create a new mail message.

In Conclusion: A Framework for the Future

In the end, this beta release of Netscape 6 is worth downloading. Whether it's ready for daily, heavy use is another issue: during five solid days of use on two Linux installation (Linux-Mandrake 7.0 and Elfstone Linux), we didn't have a whole day where Netscape 6 didn't crash a few times, and the memory leaks that plagued previous release of Netscape Communicator still seemed to be present in Netscape 6: it tended to grab more and more resources as time went on. (However, because Linux is such a stable platform, Netscape 6's problems didn't lead to any systemwide problems.)

But in the end, this release is worth watching because of the new technologies it offers (and will offer) and how it was created. Netscape 6 is the first Web browser to offer full support for XML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) 1, W3C DOM 1, and the Resource Description Framework. Netscape also promises that it will fully support CSS 2 down the road. Also supported is XUL (an XML-based user-interface language) and JavaScript 1.5.

These standards are important, and they represent an ace in the hole for Netscape. At a time when Microsoft seems to be snubbing Web standards in upcoming releases of Internet Explorer, Netscape 6's total commitment to these standards should pique the interest of corporations and enterprises, where standards really matter. You don't want to be committed a standards-driven mission-critical system to a Web-based system only to find that your Web browser doesn’t totally support the standards you've chosen.