For the past month or so, I’ve been quite smitten by Netscape’s 7.0 preview release, which I’ve found to be the consistently fastest browser in OS X, and quite solidly stable on that platform as well.
I’ve also been using Netscape 7.0 in OS 9.1 on my WallStreet PowerBook production machine, but I’ve found that the Classic OS version does not enjoy any speed advantage over Mozilla or iCab, although the built-in Flash support and some of the other Netscape bells and whistles are very convenient.
Unfortunately, I’ve also discovered that Netscape 7.0 is inclined to break when the Mac crashes. My WallStreet is pretty stable. I had a seven or eight day run without a restart of a week or two ago, in which I got up to “Untitled 160” or so in Tex Edit Plus documents. However, this IS the Classic Mac OS, and running with 20-odd programs open all the time, with only 192 MB of RAM, does mean occasional crashes. None of these have been caused by Netscape 7.0, but too often it gets damaged badly enough to require a reinstall of the program. Very tedious.
Consequently, I have reverted to Mozilla as my second browser, since it has proved robust enough to survive crashing without damage.
Last week, I downloaded and installed the latest milestone beta build of Mozilla 1.1, and so far I’m very favorably impressed. While start-up speed is still sluggish, new browser windows now open noticeably quicker than in previous Mozilla builds, and page download speed is also significantly faster. I haven’t tried the OS X version of Mozilla 1.1 yet, but the Classic OS version is the fastest browser I’ve tried on that platform. Great stuff!
The Mozilla application suite integrates
• a web browser
• an e-mail program and news reader
• an html editor
• a chat client
New in Mozilla 1.1:
• Download Manager has been enabled (with many improvements)
• Mozilla now takes advantage of Quartz rendering for users of Mac OS X 10.1.5
• Viewing HTML mail messages as plain text
• Quote original message has been implemented for 1.1a
• New layout performance enhancements targeted at DHTML.
• There have also been performance enhancements for the application startup speed.
• Viewsource for MathML and view source for selections have been implemented.
• Mozilla now has support for the display of XBM images.
• Autocomplete in the address bar has an improved sort order.
• Browser tabs now close left to right (they used to close right to left).
• The cross-plaform File Picker now has a button for creating a new directory.
• Redundant backup of preferences files has been implemented
• Mozilla’s drag and drop support has been greatly improved.
• Image blocking for Mail & News has been implemented.
New Since Mozilla 1.1 Alpha:
• Improvements to Arabic shaping which result in better layout of Arabic pages on Linux and other platforms without their own Arabic support.
• A bug was fixed which caused English text in text boxes to be displayed in the wrong direction on Hebrew pages.
• The JavaScript Debugger has gone through a major development cycle. It now sports a palette of nine views which can be rearranged within the main window, or docked in separate floating windows. It is also possible to create user defined views and commands directly with JavaScript. More details are available in the FAQ, newsgroup, or IRC channel.
• All Search entry points now your default search engine.
• Improved site compatibility and rendering.
• The tab bar now has a button for creating new tabs.
According to Mozilla.org, the ten most interesting features of Mozilla are:
• Pipelining - improves browser performance on both dial-up and broadband connections.
• Tabbed browsing - allows you to switch between pages without having to switch windows.
• Pop-up blocking
• Bookmark Keywords - simplifies surfing and searching.
• User customizability - tweak Mozilla’s preferences to meet your personal ones.
• Page viewing (zoom and alternate stylesheets) - stop being the victim of bad web-page design.
• Themes and appearance - customize the look and feel of Mozilla.
• Chat - built-in chat client lets you get started on IRC.
• Extensibility - add-ons mean that Mozilla is much more than a basic browser.
• Multiple platform support - the same lizard on different boxes (Mozilla is currently released for a dozen different platforms on a daily basis and can be compiled on many more).
System requirements:
• Mac OS 8.5 or later
• PowerPC processor (266 MHz or faster recommended)
• 64 MB RAM
• 36 MB of free hard disk space
• QuickTime
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