> >Are you saying that Netscape 6.2 is an AOL version?
>
> Yes! That is who owns it now..and it does not in any way resemble the
> original Netscape Communicator 4.7.8 build. I thought everyone knew that.
> It is sorely lacking for design.

My understanding is that Netscape 6.0 is made up mostly of Mozilla code.
AOL bought the Netscape name and contributes to the project, but I am not
sure you could say they own the browser since much of the code comes from
the Mozilla project although these are fine distinctions.

Netscape lost market share many years ago because they were charging for
Netscape. I know, I bought a 1.2 version for Windows 95.  I even paid extra
because it had extra utilities to help you manage your bookmarked links.  I
had expected a lot and it was only marginally better than it's Mosaic
predecessor which had been free.  To be honest, I didn't see enough in it to
value it at the $65 or so I paid. The bookmark software?  Well it often
resulted in the blue screen of death.

MS started cranking out free versions of I.E. and Netscape hesitated a long
time before they started doing the same thing.  There was a lot of whining
about the fact that MS was stealing the browser war.  Netscape actually lost
the browser war because they were charging for Netscape when everyone was
expecting everything Internet to be free.  After all, Mosaic and all the
other browsers had been free. It was a little bit of a shock to many of us
to pay for a browser when all the other browsers and applications were free.

Then it took three years to go from the Netscape 4.x series to the 6.x
series and it is still buggier even than the worst MS code.  For years we
begged for them to upgrade the CSS support.

I long ago got tired of trying to be loyal to Netscape when they repeatedly
bungled things. I am still not happy with CSS support.  Their 6.x  CSS does
some strange things.

Paul WIlson
webguroo(at)tampabay.rr.com

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