Netscape has released their latest browser, Netscape 6.21 which is based on the Mozilla technology, containing a number of bug fixes. There is a version for Linux, MacOS and Windows. In the meantime, Opera released the second technology preview for Linux for version 6, while MacOS only recently got their second beta for Opera 5.
I just tried the MacOS 9 beta2 (my in-laws ‘puter). It’s got this wierd window area at the top right of the browser window which always has an ad in it. I looked at the preferences and was relieved to see that there was an “advertisements” section to it. Heh. Turns out, it only seems to be there to get you *more* ads based on your demographics. Weeid. Maybe I just didn’t take enough time to figure it out. Neat download progress bar I guess. Still seemed pretty complicated tho. It’d be nice to see a Net+ for windows. Simple, clean, fast, and no ad-ware built-in for her pleasure.
Sorry, I left out the fact that I was talking about Opera in that last comment.
RTM: The “free” version of Opera makes its money off those ads.
If you’d like your Opera sans ads, then either shell out
or start searching for a keygen or something. I think it’s
worth the money myself….
I saw the article talking about the release of Opera 6 for windows last time. So I decided to try it out. I was very impressed. It says it is the “fastest browser on earth” or something like that. It seems to run blazingly fast, compared to IE 6 or NS 6.2. Both of those browser’s are very “heavy” or “bloated” if you will. But I am not necessarily talking about the time downloading a website. Just about how fast it runs. Although, IE does seem to render websites fastest, out of all three of them. That is just the speed. Look at the ability to customize, opera compared to the other competing browsers.
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Just my two bits of an Opinion.
I’ve played with all the major browsers on OS X. That would be IE, Opera, OmniWeb and Netscape/Mozilla. After quite some time, I’ve determined that the fastest browser for modem users is Netscape. This is of course qualitatively based. It more quickly renders the text as graphics load, and it also does the best job of responding to hyper-link selections while pages load. It also seems to be more stable and more standards-compliant than IE is. Unfortunately without more standards and javascript support I can’t use OmniWeb.
My biggest beef with IE is also its lack of efficiency in distributing it’s connections across all downloads/windows. One window or download can monopolize the entire browser. This happens on the Windows side too, but on windows you can easily create a new IE process which will operate independantly of the original one.
My biggest complaint about Netscape is that it doesn’t sport the Aqua interface. So far there is no Aqua theme either. I’m thinking about building one for myself, and I would distribute it if Apple didn’t put their Gestapo after anyone who publishes skins that remotely look like Aqua.