Netscape 6.0.1 Experience--Still a Beta

We loaded N6.0.1 on our 8500, Cube, Power Mac G4, PowerBook 2000 and iMac 350 SL. Dana Baggett's installation on the iMac is working better than v6.0 and he reported no problems. In fact, Dana wrote, "I just tried to access another on-line credit card account. It also now properly responds with NS 6.01. NS 6.0 would freeze on either site when attempting to access secure sections such as Make a Payment, View Your Statement, etc."

The N6.0.1 installations on an 8500 and Cube were also trouble free during use all day. The only drawback was that it took much longer than either Netscape Communicator 4.76 or Internet Explorer 5 to launch (40-45 sec vs about 7 sec). On the other hand, since installing Mac OS 9.1 both NC476 and IE5 have randomly quit with Type2 or 3 errors at a much higher frequency than with Mac OS 9.0.4. N6.0.1 didn't quit once on either computer.

Unfortunately, the N6.0.1 installations on the PowerBook 2000 and Power Mac G4 were not trouble free. Both had problems importing bookmarks. Worse, both had a significant latency when clicking the "Bookmark" menu which occasionally caused a freeze. The same problems recurred with another installer download and installation so N6.0.1 doesn't like something on those computers.

Still page loading was quick and rendering was accurate. By trial and error I discovered that to edit bookmarks one had to open the "Manage Bookmarks" window, hold down the "Option" key and double-click the URL to be edited. In addition, I could drag and drop folders of bookmarks in the bookmark window but not individual bookmarks.

N6 allows different themes to be chosen for the interface and includes Classic and Modern themes. One can download additional themes from a Netscape site. The only theme that I like besides the Classic theme is called Early Blue but that's my taste.