SillyDog701 • opinion poll: What do you think of Netscape 4.x?

by **ooopps** » Wed 08 Sep, 2004 10:39 pm

Just interested in responses... The poll of interest should be obvious.
http://ooopps.sourceforge.net/vote

ooOPps! project will be releasing source code for the polling program for free on sourceforge shortly.

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by **Fulvio** » Thu 09 Sep, 2004 4:45 pm

ooopps wrote:Just interested in responses... The poll of interest should be obvious.
http://ooopps.sourceforge.net/vote

ooOPps! project will be releasing source code for the polling program for free on sourceforge shortly.

It served its purpose. I don't feel violently pro or con

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) (CK-SillyDog)

by **goGecko** » Thu 09 Sep, 2004 10:28 pm

I agree with Fulvio about the non-violent opinion. If people want to use Communicator then that is fine. It is also fine if people use something more modern.

I was more surprised by the violent reaction of the majority. 70% of the participants voted to "kill Netscape 4." Quite a vicious response in my opion. I would have exptected that for Netscape 6 but not Communicator. Apparently there is more hard feelings from Communicator then we would expect...

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by **Danny_G** » Fri 10 Sep, 2004 4:44 am

I'm still using NS messenger 4.80 without problems

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040805 Netscape/7.2

by **Mandrake** » Fri 10 Sep, 2004 6:55 am

Netscape Communicator is worthless. Barely any CSS support, no HTML 4 support, no support for XML or XHTML.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 - DJGM.co.uk (ax)

by **DJGM** » Fri 10 Sep, 2004 10:18 am

I echo the views of Mandrake. These days Netscape Communicator is as good as useless,
since it has virtually no support for the majority of recommended modern web standards.

It was good in it's day, and I used to use it quite extensively as my primary browser.
But, those days are now long gone. Netscape 4.x is dead, and should stay that way.

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by **Antony** » Fri 10 Sep, 2004 10:21 am

Communicator is not that bad. It supported a lot of tags and good features, just just the LAYER tag the Mozilla community hates.

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by **DJGM** » Fri 10 Sep, 2004 10:31 am

Communicator supported certain proprietary non standard tags that only worked . . . in Netscape.

These days, Netscape 4.x is 100% obsolete. Aside from support for non standard HTML tags, and
lack of support for current standards, goodness knows how many security bugs it'll have by now!

If anyone is still using Netscape 4.x as their primarily browser in 2004, I recommend that they
shutdown their computer forthwith, and book themselves into their local psychiatric institute!

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040803 Firefox/0.9.3

by **Antony** » Fri 10 Sep, 2004 10:50 am

DJGM wrote:Communicator supported certain proprietary non standard tags that only worked . . . in Netscape.

There were many good proprietary tags introduced, improved, and supported by Communicator.

There's nothing wrong with non-standard.

Please do not forget, back then, Netscape only have very limited seats in the W3C, Microsoft and Microsoft allies have majority of seats.

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by **Andrew T.** » Fri 10 Sep, 2004 10:53 am

Netscape Navigator/Communicator 4.08 was the last Netscape browser released for Windows 3.1x and and 680x0-based Macs; as such, it may still come in handy in a few select cases, however rare.

Otherwise, there's little to say about the Netscape Communicator 4.x series other than that it is technologically obsolete and has been eclipsed by much more modern and competitive Gecko-based browsers. Its CSS support is dreadful, and IMO it hasn't seen any real development since 1998. I almost never use it for anything but testing nowadays.

If given the choice I would still use Netscape 4.8 over IE 6.0, however, though only out of personal loyalties rather than technological reasons.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win95; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040803 Firefox/0.9.3

by **Mandrake** » Fri 10 Sep, 2004 6:36 pm

As bad as IE is, it is still *much* better than Netscape 4. At least in IE you get sites that render properly most of the time, in Netscape 4 you're lucky to find one that will render correctly! (Try www.news.com.au in Navigator 4, and then in a modern browser).

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 - DJGM.co.uk (ax)

by Al » Fri 10 Sep, 2004 11:23 pm

Well I think NS 4 an IE 6 are equal, as their both 4th gen browsers, but every browser has it's pros and cons well IE 6 just have more and serious bugs

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by **DJGM** » Wed 15 Sep, 2004 4:01 am

IE6 may have it's fair share of bugs, in both security and functionality, but even though it still has
a fourth generation rendering engine at it's core, at least it's still being maintained by it's maker!

Netscape gave up on it's 4.x series many moons ago, and handed the baton to Sun Microsystems,
to continue maintanence of Netscape 4.x for the few corporate organisations that still use it. But,
even that seems to have been effectively abandoned. We should live with this cold hard fact . . .

Netscape 4.x is DEAD. Finito. No more. Game Over. End of story.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 - DJGM.co.uk (ax)

by **Fulvio** » Thu 16 Sep, 2004 3:01 pm

I just wanted to add a recent experience. Someone in the Communicator forum was having problems with 4.03 in WinXP Pro. It should easy to check, so, I tried. The results tell me that those early 4.x are useless.
At the last count NS4.8 was not "completely useless", but worth keeping if hook to Yahoo stuff, which asked me to "upgrade" my NS7.2 to 4.7! :roll:

Anyway, it is not right to lump all 4.x into one.
Assuming that no later Netscapes and Mozilla would suddenly be unavailable, would you say that NS6.0 is like 6.2.3? I am sure than someone will, but 6.0 was an umitigated piece of junk, which 6.2.3, with all its flaws, is still usable.

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by **ryaxnb** » Mon 20 Sep, 2004 8:07 pm

Well I dislike N4. For it's time i'd give it 2.5/5 and now i'd give it 1.5/5.

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opinion poll: What do you think of Netscape 4.x?

opinion poll: What do you think of Netscape 4.x?

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