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Several builds of the open source Mozilla browser (which forms the basis for Netscape 6) have been released since I last checked it out, so I decided to download Mozilla 0.9 over the weekend and see how things are progressing in Mozilla-land.

The installer (I downloaded the full installer --11 MB and change) worked well, and was very quick. Just unstuff the compressed file and run the installer. It also slurped up my Netscape 4.76 profile and Bookmarks smoothly. After the initial setup, Mozilla takes about 30 seconds to launch -- much longer than iCab, Opera, or Netscape 4.7.

The good news is that this is the best Mozilla yet. It's very fast on Web pages that it "likes," and I've never seen any browser display Applelinks news pages faster. It also scrolls very smoothly, although not as fast as some other browsers. However, unfortunately that's about the best I can say for it.

I have never been able to use either Mozilla or Netscape 6.x for more than half an hour without them crashing or locking up. Mozilla 0.9 was no improvement, and in fact even worse than the last build I tried. I managed to build a visit about half a dozen Web pages before the Bookmarks menu grayed out and the program refused to respond even to the Quit command.

I force Quit with MacsBug and restarted the program without incident, so I will give it credit for not taking down the system with it, as earlier Mozilla builds used to do when they crashed.

Aside from the pathetic stability, which renders Mozilla unusable for regular use, and IMHO, the program is still disabled every time you log off the Internet, which dial-up users like me do, in some cases, a dozen or more times a day. Indeed, my ISP logs me off automatically after 15 minutes of no activity. This necessitates quitting and restarting Mozilla each time. How hard can it be to fix this? No other browser, even the early alpha and beta builds of iCab and Opera, behave this way.

Other complaints: my Scrollability automatic scroller control panel is supported on some pages but not others; the Mac OS double scrolling arrows in the scroll bars are likewise sporadically supported. Overall, the bottom line here is that while Mozilla is fast and has some interesting features, after more than two years of development it is still a very ragged effort. Opera, after a much shorter gestation period, and still an Alpha (technology preview) build, is much more stable and usable, as well as being smaller and faster in general.

Mozilla is also bloated and RAM-greedy. The default RAM partition is 28,672k (minimum 20,480k), and while the Mozilla application itself is only a tiny 240k, the Mozilla folder is a whopping 26.9 MB.

By comparison, Opera defaults to 8192k (minimum 4096k), and the Opera folder occupies only 4 MB of hard drive real estate. iCab is smaller yet, defaulting to just a 2 MB RAM partition (minimum 1.5 MB), and its folder is all of 3.2 MB.

iCab, still a beta, is in my experience the most stable browser available for the Mac, and has been the one I have used as my mainstay for more than two years now. It does not have Javascript fully implemented yet, and you occasionally encounter a web page that it can't handle, but for the most part, it's the best choice in Mac browsers.

I keep Netscape 4.76 running to deal with the few things iCab can't do, and I think that if the Mozilla folks would get around to fixing the log off bug, I would switch to Mozilla for that purpose, but at this point, that shortcoming still a fatal flaw as far as I'm concerned.

I prefer Mozilla to its sibling, Netscape 6.1, because it is happily free of all the commercial gewgaws and junk that AOL insists on tacking onto Netscape.

I would suggest that the Mozilla/AOL folks stop encumbering their browsers with the essentially useless Composer HTML authoring module, which nobody uses, and perhaps even the Messenger e-mail module, which is a mediocre substitute for a real e-mail client like Eudora or Nisus Email.

Charles W. Moore

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