Upgrade secures Net browser's dominance -- for now.
Jason Snell
Rating: Acceptable/Very Good (3.5 of 5 mice)
IT'S NO FLUKE that Netscape Navigator has a whopping 70 percent of the market share for Internet browsers: It's speedy, attractive, and better than any other application at displaying pages designed in HTML (HyperText Markup Language), the cross-platform language of the Internet's multimedia-rich World Wide Web. With version 2.0, Netscape has improved Navigator's speed and ease of use and is seeking to further its role in pioneering Web standards, with the introduction of a plug-in architecture that simplifies third-party add-ons. Despite Netscape's admirable ambition, however, Navigator 2.0 has significant limitations and is seriously lacking compared to its Windows and UNIX counterparts.
One reason for Navigator 1.x's popularity was Netscape's tradition of advancing HTML by introducing new formatting standards, or tags, to the language. These let Web authors spruce up their pages with nifty effects -- and they gave Navigator, the only browser initially able to tap those effects, a competitive edge. Tags introduced with the first version of Netscape are starting to be supported by other browsers, so Netscape has upped the ante by introducing several new tags with Navigator 2.0. Most notable of these are the Frames tags, which let authors split Navigator's window into independent panes. But unlike Netscape's earlier innovations, frames aren't particularly compelling or useful: They're difficult for authors to create and even more difficult for users to navigate. Each frame is an independent Navigator window-within-the-main-window, which creates confusion about master navigational controls. We found ourselves reflexively clicking on the Back button to retrace links in a frame, only to watch in frustration as the entire main window disappeared.
Plugging In
One big addition in Navigator 2.0 is the Plug-Ins folder. Navigator can use third-party plug-ins to display data types the browser itself doesn't support. Vendors have promised plug-ins supporting such formats as QuickTime, RealAudio, Macromedia Director, and Acrobat PDF, but only a few were shipping at press time. Still, early versions of Macromedia's Shockwave plug-in show the potential: A file created in Director can be downloaded and displayed in the Navigator window as if it were an in-line GIF image. Sounds and animations can play, and mouse clicks can be treated as links in the Director file or as hyperlinks to other Web pages. Seamless support for formats other than HTML, GIF, and JPEG is long overdue, but it does come at a cost: Netscape plug-ins can eat up a lot of RAM.
Netscape's commitment to plug-ins signifies a turn away from helper applications, its old method for handling new or alien file formats. (Apple's MoviePlayer, for example, could be set up as a helper application for Navigator, so that if you ran into a Web page containing a QuickTime movie, the player would launch and show the movie to you in a separate window.) Adding helper apps to Netscape 1.x was always difficult, because of an arcane dialog box, and that poor implementation is essentially unchanged in Navigator 2.0. With luck, a growing acceptance of plug-ins will soon make this deficiency moot.
Navigator 1.1's Bookmarks feature -- intended to help you keep track of your favorite sites on the Net -- really didn't simplify things much. Bookmarks just piled up willy-nilly in a drop-down menu, unless you took pains to arrange them, using a complex dialog box. Navigator 2.0 thankfully organizes your favorite sites in a Finder-style list that lets you drag and drop bookmarks into nested folders and display them in a hierarchical menu list.
Not content to let Navigator be just a Web browser, Netscape has turned Navigator 2.0 into a POP/SMTP e-mail reader as well. From within a three-paned window, users can send, receive, and file e-mail messages. However, this interface makes using Navigator for e-mail extremely difficult on small monitors. You'd be better off with Qualcomm's free Eudora Light e-mail software than with the cramped Netscape system. Likewise hindered by a three-paned window is Navigator's new ability to read Internet newsgroups.
A Jones for Java
The chief disappointment with the Mac version of Navigator 2.0 is its lack of support for Java, Sun Microsystems' cross-platform programming language, which allows Web authors to embed executable programs (or applets) into their pages. Java is one of the hottest things on the Internet, and both the UNIX and the Windows versions of Navigator 2.0 support it. Netscape promises Java support in a future Mac release, but Navigator 2.0's lack of support for Java and the thousands of Java applets threatens to make the Mac a second-class Internet citizen. (Navigator 2.0 does support JavaScript, a less powerful scripting language based on Java.)
One other drawback to Navigator 2.0 is instability -- it has a tendency to crash (and freeze up your Mac in the process) more often than most standard Mac applications. And users of PCI-based Power Macs should note that Netscape advises against using versions of Open Transport earlier than 1.1, even though that version was still just a beta release at press time.
The Bottom Line
Right now, Netscape Navigator is the only product in its class. It's clearly the best Mac Web browser available, and its new plug-in architecture will transform the Web into a much richer multimedia environment. However, Navigator is RAM-hungry (especially with plug-ins), its e-mail and news readers seem mere afterthoughts, and it crashes more often than it should. With Microsoft's free Internet Explorer 2.0 on the horizon (and looking impressive in its beta release), Navigator 2.0 may soon face a challenge for Web supremacy. But for now, using Navigator 2.0 really is the only way to surf.
