Review: Netscape 5 Alpha

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by Jeremy Luebke

4 Geeks

Netscape has been hard at work developing what will be Netscape 5. They recently released an alpha version called M14 (milestone) so I decided to download it to see if it had what it takes to regain it's popularity and once again give Internet Explorer a run for it's money. You can download a copy of M14 at Mozilla.org.

Before we get too far into the review let me remind you that this version is only in the alpha testing stage so many changes will probably occur before the final version is released. With this in mind I did find many bugs in the software. The good news is that the Mozilla development team is working diligently to fix these errors. I have reported several of these bugs to the Bugzilla web site and every time I have gotten a response back within hours. Most of the bugs I reported were fixed the next day in the nightly builds they are doing.

The big question is: Does this new browser render HTML and DHTML correctly? The most recent build I downloaded does not display DHTML properly whether it was written for Explorer or Netscape browsers. I talked to an engineer over at Mozilla.org and he said it was working fine on their end but I tried it on two different computers and it still wasn't working. He said they would look into it. The good news is it does seem to display complex HTML a little better than the older versions of Netscape browsers.

Now let's get to the features which the new browser has plenty of. The first thing I noticed was that it forced me to create a default user profile when I first started it up. I thought to myself, why? It turns out that each user of the browser can have their own profile with their information stored securely. This was an option in the versions prior, but now it is a requirement. Each profile has it's own password for privacy purposes and this also keeps all your different passwords to the sites you visit safe from prying eyes. Every time you enter in a new ID and password it will give you the option of saving for future reference. Unlike Internet Explorer which gives you the option of saving passwords in a cookie file which could be erased, become corrupt, expire, or even be used by other people at your computer, the new Netscape browser stores passwords in an encrypted data file permanently so you will never forget a password again.

The next thing that struck me was the look. This is not the same bland browser you are used to using. The tool bar is kept clean and simple and the normal clutter of buttons and icons have now disappeared. While this will not be the final look, it's a good indication of things to come. There are also rumors that users will be able to use custom 'skins' on the browser. Have a look at these screen shots (clicking on any will open a larger screen shot):

Another nice feature is that Mozilla keeps a copy of imported IE bookmarks automatically. This is a good move on Netscape's part. It overcomes one hurdle of convincing people to switch over from IE.

For those of you that would like to read web pages that aren't in English they have a link for translating text. This feature is not working at the moment but I have been told it will be soon. Netscape has also tightly integrated search into the browser. There is a search feature on the sidebar, which can be turned off. You can choose what search engines you want the search to query. The choices are made by putting a check in front of the name of the engine. The choices at this time are Excite, Google, GoTo, HotBot, LookSmart, Snap.

All in all the new features and the clean look of the Netscape 5.0 browser make it an attractive choice for web surfing. With that in mind I can only hope that the final version will display code properly, but only the time will tell whether or not Netscape has kept their promise to make a browser that conforms to the HTML and DHTML standards set by Internet Explorer in the browser race.

You can help the Mozilla project by downloading a copy and sending in bug reports. The more they receive, the better the browser will be.