Netscape 7.1 ReleasedSunday June 29th, 2003Netscape Communications Corporation today released its new Netscape 7.1 browser, which is based on Mozilla 1.4. This version — codenamed Buffy during development — offers several new features, including automatic image resizing, which shrinks large images to fit in the browser window, and Find As You Type, a tool that allows users to search for links or text on a webpage just by typing. Tweakers will appreciate the new editable about:config (try setting the boolean general.smoothScroll preference to true to get smooth scrolling) and Windows users can now log in to sites that use NTLM authentication. Bookmarks, tabbed browsing and popup blocking have all been improved and 7.1 should fit in better with your desktop's look-and-feel. Mail & Newsgroups also has its share of enhancements with junk mail detection, message views, improved filtering capabilities (there's support for multiple actions, newsgroup filters and running filters after the fact) and Address Book Palm synchronisation. Composer hasn't been forgotten, with a 'breadcrumb bar' of HTML elements on the Status Bar and click-and-drag dynamic image and table resizing. In addition, there's improved support for Web standards (such as WSDL proxying), better performance and stability, and several thousand other bug fixes. Netscape 7.1 is the first Netscape release to ship with the Gecko Runtime Environment and the Mozilla ActiveX control and plug-in. This latest version also features an optional Developer Pack, which installs ChatZilla, the DOM Inspector and the Venkman JavaScript Debugger — familiar to Mozilla Application Suite users but never seen before in a Netscape distribution. You can download Netscape 7.1 for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X (7.02 was the last Mac OS 8/9 version). Update! The Netscape 7 Release Notes have been updated with information about the new version and Netscape DevEdge has a new section all about Netscape 7.1, with details about its improved support for Web standards. I'm just curious, anyone tried about:buildconfig on NS7.1 (especially on Linux), what does it report ? Looks normal.. nothing curious, or am I missing something? about:buildconfig Build platform target i686-pc-linux-gnu Build tools Compiler Version Compiler flags /usr/gcc-3.2.3/bin/gcc gcc version 3.2.3 -Wall -W -Wno-unused -Wpointer-arith -Wcast-align -pedantic -Wno-long-long -g -pthread -pipe /usr/gcc-3.2.3/bin/g++ gcc version 3.2.3 -fno-rtti -fno-exceptions -Wall -Wconversion -Wpointer-arith -Wcast-align -Woverloaded-virtual -Wsynth -Wno-ctor-dtor-privacy -pedantic -Wno-long-long -g -fshort-wchar -pthread -pipe -I/usr/X11R6/include Configure arguments --disable-tests --enable-extensions=default,irc --without-system-nspr --without-system-jpeg --without-system-zlib --without-system-png --without-system-mng --disable-debug --enable-optimize --disable-elf-dynstr-gc --enable-crypto ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/netscape7/english/7.1/windows/win32/sea There's a 3 installation: NSSetup-Base.exe 12187 KB 27.06.2003 16:39:00 NSSetup-Full.exe 29973 KB 27.06.2003 14:22:00 NSSetup-PROMO.exe 29974 KB 27.06.2003 14:22:00 Subj? Base and Full are known, but PROMO? ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/netscape7/english/7.1/windows/win32/sea There's a 3 installation: NSSetup-Base.exe 12187 KB 27.06.2003 16:39:00 NSSetup-Full.exe 29973 KB 27.06.2003 14:22:00 NSSetup-PROMO.exe 29974 KB 27.06.2003 14:22:00 Subj? Base and Full are known, but PROMO? As I had expected from my experience with Netscape 6.2, the UI is as fast as Firebird, so you can't go wrong. You must change the preferences, though, as it does things like allowing popups from netscape.com. My major bone is that the navigation bar, etc., can't seem to be edited. I'm now used to my minimalist menu bar on Firebird and this could be a deal-breaker. Otherwise, newbies should try this polished browser. About:BuildConfig Build platform target i586-pc-msvc Build tools Compiler Version Compiler flags cl 12.00.8804 for 80x86 -TC -nologo -W3 -nologo -Gy -Fd$(PDBFILE) cl 12.00.8804 for 80x86 -TP -nologo -W3 -nologo -Gy -Fd$(PDBFILE) Configure arguments --without-system-jpg --without-system-zlib --with-extensions=all --enable-optimize --disable-debug --disable-tests --enable-crypto If 7.1 is based on 1.4, why haven't Netscape done what they usually do and wait for 1.4 to come out and be tested before finishing work on 7.1? Probably trying to catch the hype. By releasing Netscape first, they might scoop more press than if it was hot on the tail of 1.4. ...that Asa must know about it. So the question becomes, when will Mozilla 1.4 be released? I think Mozilla 1.4 is going to be released today. As it was mentioned before in http://www.mozillanews.org/ 1.4 should be released today. And my guess is that they both aimed this time for a mutual release. Cool, Mozilla 1.4 is much more better than Mozilla 1.0 Now, everyone can enjoy Mozilla at its best. I hope Netscape can provide a translation in Spanish soon. Netscape always provided the 4.x browser for many more platforms than just Wondows, Linux and Mac, I hope they will do this for NS7.1 too. seems they forgot to include the "block images from this server" option in the context menu? The registration dialog also says "NS 7.0" instead of 7.1. Thats what I saw after the first few seconds of use .... "seems they forgot to include the 'block images from this server' option in the context menu?" That's never been included in a Netscape release. You have to set the boolean imageblocker.enabled pref to true to restore it. Alex whole bunch of stuff on devedge about Netscape 7.1 - http://devedge.netscape.com/library/releases/netscape-7.1/ (found via Doron's "blaahg" - http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/doron/ ) Thanks for the heads-up. The devedge article on the Client Object Cross References - http://devedge.netscape.com/library/xref/2002/client-data/ is extremely useful for identifying different DOM capabilities, i.e., via Javascript Object testing, for example. The Netscape site is not doing much to promote the advantages of this release, I can see any mention of the developer pack on the website, any mention of activex or anything like that. They really need to get their website sorted out, otherwise people aren't going to know why to upgrade from 7.0. At least the mozillazine site has listed all the advantages. Shame they didn't do at least one public beta of this release too, there's a few minor bugs I've noticed that I'll have to report using their feedback mechanism (Help > Feedback centre) "The Netscape site is not doing much to promote the advantages of this release, I can see any mention of the developer pack on the website, any mention of activex or anything like that." Netscape doesn't do PR. Or should I say AOL doesn't care about Netscape? Really if they were even remotely interested in getting Netscape out there you'd see some real PR going on. Sadly unlike the barrage of AOL adverts, AOL doesn't push Netscape the slightest bit. I mean their biggest concern as of late was securing the use of IE for AOL for the next 5 years, not promoting Netscape 7.x over Internet Explorer. I've said this several times now, but where the heck are the deals with oem computer makers? Where is marketing? Why hasn't AOL spent 1/100 of the amount they do hyping AOL? You can't expect to gain market share by sitting around on your bottom, and that's exactly the attitude Netscape/AOL has taken about this browser. I honestly don't even know what AOL is even getting out of the Netscape browser at this point, so maybe that's the real issue. I'm grateful for Mozilla which Netscape graciously sponsored and paid people to work on, but its plain to anyone who has been following Netscape/Mozilla for the last several years that Netscape/AOL isn't serious about promoting Netscape over Internet Explorer. For anyone still under the impression that Netscape has a future beyond the few corporate holdout who use it, get that thought out of your mind. Netscape is dead, long live Mozilla. I just noticed in About Netscape that Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax)...does it mean this thing doesn't have all the fixes from 6/25 onward? Well it does. But there are no fixes on the 1.4 branch from 6/25 onward, so nothing is missing. The date is the same as the 1.4RC3 build date, which is about to be released as Mozilla 1.4. If there are any fixes on the 1.4 branch in the future, they could go into 1.4.1 and/or Netscape 7.11, but for the moment, nothing is being changed on the 1.4 branch. Congratulations to the Nescape team! I can't live without Xft builds anymore. That's all I use on linux these days. Without Xft the fonts look like crap. I'd like to try this but without font smoothing on Linux I won't bother. Ok, I dunno where to turn to w. Netscape questions, so here's one. I installed the NIM.xpi on their FTP on my base install, and while ICQ works, AIM doesn't. It logs in fine cuz it shows the right folder names (I've 4 buddy lists), but it shows things like "Misc (0/0)." If I start it from the start menu link, the windows that opens shows it's trying to get something from the net after logging in, but never quite finishes. Maybe it's having problems getting the list? Please help. Do I need to get the full install or something? I'd rather not do that w. all the other stuff I don't use. Does anyone know what Netscape did with xpcom.dll?? or what its equivalent is now? It's still there but as part of the GRE (Gecko Runtime Environment) which is usually to be found in "Program Files\Common Files\mozilla.org\GRE". The GRE version corresponds to the build version you see in the about:box. Does anyone know what Netscape did with xpcom.dll?? or what its equivalent is now? Does anyone know what Netscape did with xpcom.dll?? or what its equivalent is now? Awesome. DOM Inpector finally made it into a Netscape commercial release!!!!!!!!!!!! Netscape is under AOL? So, is there possible spyware inside Netscape 7.1? Besides, Winamp is under AOL too, and ICQ and AIM... I recently convinced my work (all comps OS X) to switch away from IE, thanks to the news that Microsoft will no longer support mac IE and there were some bugs bugging them already. I would like to try to get them to switch to Mozilla/Netscape, but I fear I will not be able to over Safari. Safari is OK being standards compliant, but I wish I could get all those computers running Moz. Mozilla really needs an extended bug-squashing period so they can fix some long standing bugs and release the most stable build ever, it would really help in getting corporations to switch. Now that firebird is becoming the main focus, will Netscape follow suite? What's the status of SVG support? The free plugins that are available are still only for earlier versions, AFAIK. SVG support is very important to me and it doesn't seem to be available. See http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/Overview.htm8 . Would like to see JPEG2000 get into some popular browsers. The Mozilla folks seem to have some kind of IPR problem with it even though the license for the decoder is free. I like the fact Netscape is spreading "download Netscape 7.1" ads all over its website, they're HUGE and unavoidable. I would hope to see some of those in places like CNN.com and SI.com I'm running netscape 7.1 under slackware 9.0 and I can't seem to get java to work. I've downloaded the latest java vm. Has anyone else run into this problem. Im using Java 1.4.2, Netscape 7.1 and Slackware 9.0 After hours it turned out all I was missing was the link in the netscape/plugins directory. So all I did was create a link from the Java plugin directory/file: /usr/local/java/j2re1.4.2/plugin/i386/ns610-gcc32/libjavaplugin_oji.so In to the Netscape plugins directory, /usr/local/netscape/plugins/libjavaplugin_oji.so You can check what Netscape thinks of your operation by going to Help-->About Plug-ins this will give a list of your plugins its found. I had to use the one in /ns610-gcc32/ directory coz the ns4 and ns610 ones just gave me junk. All that time and all it was was a simple drag and drop operation in KDE. I think Sun and others could have explained the whole process a little easier instread of making a meal of it.... Good luck. I just installed 7.1 on a Win2K system that had 7.0 for quite a while. Now with an existing IMAP account, I can't create a compose window. I just can a dialog saying that there was an error creating the compose window and to try again. Restarting the browser doesn't seem to help. Any ideas? Thanks sdw Yep, 7.1 is useless - I'm getting the "Error Creating Compose Window" too. Running Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1, RedHat 7.3. Also, the installer is up to it's old bad habit of installing with bogus permissions, such that Netscape core dumps then started. A "chmod -R og+rx /usr/local/netscape" cleared that. My recommendation would be to not upgrade unless something is wrong. I only upgraded because my 7.0.3 was crashing every time I tried to open my Mail Filters. Does anyone know where I can get a Zip file copy of Netscape 7.1? I know that Mozilla 1.4 has this, but I need Netscape. I recently crashed my computer and am in the process of re-installing all my applications including Netscape. When I install Netscape, all goes well and all shortcuts appear on the desktop, pointing to the right folder, however nothing happens when I click on the Netscape icon. I re-installed a couple of times and verrified the content of the Netscape folder and all seems OK. However, in all instances Netscape deos not want to launch neither from the icon on the desktop nor from the one in the Netscape folder (C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape). I also tried to launch the other applications related to Netscape (Mail, Instant Messenger) but got the same result. I would appreciate any assistance with this matter. Thanks, J. Touboul I recently crashed my computer and am in the process of re-installing all my applications including Netscape. When I install Netscape, all goes well and all shortcuts appear on the desktop, pointing to the right folder, however nothing happens when I click on the Netscape icon. I re-installed a couple of times and verrified the content of the Netscape folder and all seems OK. However, in all instances Netscape deos not want to launch neither from the icon on the desktop nor from the one in the Netscape folder (C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape). I also tried to launch the other applications related to Netscape (Mail, Instant Messenger) but got the same result. I would appreciate any assistance with this matter. Thanks, J. Touboul I have the same problem as jtouboul on Windows XP. I suspect it may be something to do with upgrading from Windows 98 to XP. Here's the output from filemon (from www.sysinternals.com) when I start netscape. It seems it is looking for xpcom.dll which is not there. There are also some strange entries to do with Diskeeper lite for some reason. 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 QUERY INFORMATION C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\Netscp.exe SUCCESS FileNameInformation 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 QUERY INFORMATION C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\Netscp.exe SUCCESS FileNameInformation 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 OPEN C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape SUCCESS Options: Open Directory Access: Traverse 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 OPEN C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\Netscp.exe.Local FILE NOT FOUND Options: Open Access: All 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 OPEN C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\nspr4.dll SUCCESS Options: Open Access: All 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 QUERY INFORMATION C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\nspr4.dll SUCCESS Attributes: A 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 CLOSE C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\nspr4.dll SUCCESS 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 OPEN C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\nspr4.dll SUCCESS Options: Open Access: All 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 QUERY INFORMATION C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\nspr4.dll SUCCESS Attributes: A 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 CLOSE C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\nspr4.dll SUCCESS 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 OPEN C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\nspr4.dll SUCCESS Options: Open Access: Execute 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 CLOSE C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\nspr4.dll SUCCESS 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 OPEN C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\WSOCK32.dll FILE NOT FOUND Options: Open Access: All 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 OPEN C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\WS2_32.dll FILE NOT FOUND Options: Open Access: All 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 OPEN C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\WS2HELP.dll FILE NOT FOUND Options: Open Access: All 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 OPEN C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\plc4.dll SUCCESS Options: Open Access: All 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 QUERY INFORMATION C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\plc4.dll SUCCESS Attributes: A 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 CLOSE C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\plc4.dll SUCCESS 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 OPEN C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\plc4.dll SUCCESS Options: Open Access: All 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 QUERY INFORMATION C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\plc4.dll SUCCESS Attributes: A 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 CLOSE C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\plc4.dll SUCCESS 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 OPEN C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\plc4.dll SUCCESS Options: Open Access: Execute 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 CLOSE C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\plc4.dll SUCCESS 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 OPEN C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\Netscp.exe.Local\ FILE NOT FOUND Options: Open Access: All 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 OPEN C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\ SUCCESS Options: Open Directory Access: All 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 DIRECTORY C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\ NO SUCH FILE FileBothDirectoryInformation: xpcom.dll 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 CLOSE C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\ SUCCESS 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 OPEN C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\xpcom.dll FILE NOT FOUND Options: Open Access: All 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 OPEN C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\xpcom.dll FILE NOT FOUND Options: Open Access: All 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 OPEN C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\"C:\Program Files\Executive Software\DiskeeperLite\"\xpcom.dll NAME INVALID Options: Open Access: All 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 OPEN C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\xpcom.dll FILE NOT FOUND Options: Open Access: All 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 OPEN C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\"C:\Program Files\Executive Software\DiskeeperLite\"\xpcom.dll NAME INVALID Options: Open Access: All 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 OPEN C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\xpcom.dll FILE NOT FOUND Options: Open Access: All 12:51:52 Netscp.exe:4020 CLOSE C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape SUCCESS Well, I thought this could be related to your question (but it is not, see below, I just posted it, and also because the text was already written, when I noticed it), though, I use Mozilla Firefox and not Netscape, but it seems they uses the same "common libraries". It's just when I inspected some of Mozilla's dlls with Dependancy Walker, for example qfaservices.dll, jar50.dll, jsd3250.dll, inspector.dll (and others, all with "Mozilla Foundation" or only "Mozilla" under "company" in file properties), I noticed, they all have the same unresolved exports (not same C functions, but being dependant of the same dlls), all pointing to NSPR4.DLL, XPCOM.DLL, PLDS4.DLL, PLC4.DLL. But then, I actually found out, this is only couse Dependancy Walker hasn't got Firefox's search path when monitoring/resolving dependancies (dynamic C exports to separate functions and loking in module’s file header), cause I launched Dependancy Walker (for that particular dll) from "inside" Process Explorer (also application from Sysinternals, like Filemon you monitored with, btw., I just love so many Mark's utilities). My bad ... Cheers, and sorry that I can't help actually. :D Well, I thought this could be related to your question (but it is not, see below, I just posted it, and also because the text was already written, when I noticed it), though, I use Mozilla Firefox and not Netscape, but it seems they uses the same "common libraries". It's just when I inspected some of Mozilla's dlls with Dependancy Walker, for example qfaservices.dll, jar50.dll, jsd3250.dll, inspector.dll (and others, all with "Mozilla Foundation" or only "Mozilla" under "company" in file properties), I noticed, they all have the same unresolved exports (not same C functions, but being dependant of the same dlls), all pointing to NSPR4.DLL, XPCOM.DLL, PLDS4.DLL, PLC4.DLL. But then, I actually found out, this is only couse Dependancy Walker hasn't got Firefox's search path when monitoring/resolving dependancies (dynamic C exports to separate functions and loking in module’s file header), cause I launched Dependancy Walker (for that particular dll) from "inside" Process Explorer (also application from Sysinternals, like Filemon you monitored with, btw., I just love so many Mark's utilities). My bad ... Cheers, and sorry that I can't help actually. :D Sorry for double posting. I am fresh-registered user, and I also experienced some troubles when posting, probably becouse I am a (only) 56K dial-up adapter user (with only 28.8 or 32.3 Kbps as my actual connection speed, established with ISP), and the request was somehow timed-out (cause of big load on other sites at that time, and therefore big badwidth usage), and I appearantly I applied it twice ... Greeting all ... Well, I thought this could be related to your question (but it is not, see below, I just posted it, and also because the text was already written, when I noticed it), though, I use Mozilla Firefox and not Netscape, but it seems they uses the same "common libraries". It's just when I inspected some of Mozilla's dlls with Dependancy Walker, for example qfaservices.dll, jar50.dll, jsd3250.dll, inspector.dll (and others, all with "Mozilla Foundation" or only "Mozilla" under "company" in file properties), I noticed, they all have the same unresolved exports (not same C functions, but being dependant of the same dlls), all pointing to NSPR4.DLL, XPCOM.DLL, PLDS4.DLL, PLC4.DLL. But then, I actually found out, this is only couse Dependancy Walker hasn't got Firefox's search path when monitoring/resolving dependancies (dynamic C exports to separate functions and loking in module’s file header), cause I launched Dependancy Walker (for that particular dll) from "inside" Process Explorer (also application from Sysinternals, like Filemon you monitored with, btw., I just love so many Mark's utilities). My bad ... Cheers, and sorry that I can't help actually. :D ii ii |