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Netscape Releases 6 01
Netscape today quietly released version 6.01 of its Netscape browser. My initial — and very cursory — analysis of the revised browser:
- Somehow, the full download has gained an extra five megabytes of digital girth (approx. 30 MB for 6.01 Win32 vs. approx. 25 MB for version 6.0 Win32).
- The AOL branding is a little more heavy-handed: the install plunks an application named "Stamps.exe" onto the desktop, even though I instructed the Custom setup not to install the Stamps.com add-on (whatever it is). Presumably, the appearance of the executable on the Desktop is the result of an installation bug.
- One of my favorite quirks of the Netscape 6 installation options has been its curious English-language offerings, traditionally English (Germany), English (France), and English (Japan). Now they've added one that actually makes sense: English (Great Britain). Cheers!
- The browser still has crippling problems with the display of background images in tables and table cells. It appears that combinations of background-attachment and background-repeat properties are at the root of the problem. The net result is that background images on <td>s often appear as though they are applied to the entire table, and backgrounds on a table appear as though they are applied individually to the <td>s. I will study this further.
- Problems with sluggish image rollovers and broken pixel-precise table layouts remain in this release.
Offhand, I don't see any changes to the user interface or any new menu or preference options. Presumably, the bulk of the changes are bug fixes. Its userAgent string (running under Windows NT with US English as the default language) is as follows:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; m18) Gecko/20010131 Netscape6/6.01
At the moment, the download is available only via the Netscape FTP site. Full downloads are available as follows:
Additional information about the download is available in an article on CNET.
