NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR 1.1 BETA 1 FOR MACINTOSH

We're also interested in your feedback on: Printing bugs (please try printing as much as possible), and any problems that you had upgrading from Netscape 1.0 to Netscape 1.1b1.

UPDATE & VERSION INFORMATION

• This is a beta version of 1.1. The currently released Netscape Navigator version 1.0N will continue to be available on our server until the final release of 1.1.
• Customers who bought 1.0 will be entitled to a free version of 1.1 when it is officially released; these customers will be able to download a 1.1N version and be licensed to use this version.
• Customers will not automatically receive the 1.1 version in the mail. It will be up to the customer to download the new version from our home pages.
• Licensed 1.0 customers will be able to transfer whatever time remains of their 90 days of support to the 1.1 version once it is officially released.

• We will not be selling version 1.1 until it is officially released. However, if you purchase version 1.0 now you will be entitled to a free update to the final version of 1.1.
• We expect to release version 1.1 under the same terms and pricing as the 1.0 release, including a 1.1N release. You can find more information about ordering from our Netscape Store.

A number of new features were added as part of the version 1.1 product. These were based upon emerging standards and proposals. The new HTML tags are based upon the HTML 3.0 proposal. The HTTP additions are based upon discussions within the working group mailing list and the MIME standard. Netscape Communications Corporation is an active participant in all Web-related standard bodies and is a founding Full Member of the W3 Consortium. Please read our discussion of Netscape's commitment to open standards, if you're interested in more information.

Please be advised, however, that since HTML 3.0 is still an evolving proposal, some of the new tags supported in Netscape 1.1b1 may change before the final Netscape 1.1 release. We will support the syntax that is agreed upon for the final HTML 3.0 specification. This could mean that some of the tags which are supported in the beta will change between now and the final release as the standard evolves.

• Bug fixes: Many fixes since 1.0.

• Performance: Many operations should be faster. Going back to visited pages is now faster, because we're using available memory to cache decoded images.

• PowerMac Version is now available.

• Tables: These are as defined in the current HTML 3.0 draft specification. For a demonstration of tables, click here.

• Backgrounds: ... and the ability to change text colors: for a demonstration, click here. Since Netscape 1.1a1, we've changed the HTML for backgrounds. The demonstration pages will show you the new HTML.

• User Defined Backgrounds: You can specify default background colors and images in the Preferences.

• Remote Control Mechanism: You can control Netscape from outside of the application. For more information, read Netscape Client APIs.

• Dynamic Documents: You can create documents whose contents are updated dynamically, either on a periodic basis or irregularly. See here for details.

• Popup Menu: A Popup menu with some key commands right at your fingertips. To see the pop-up menu on the Windows or X platform, hold down the right mouse button over the document area. On the Macintosh, hold down your mouse button for about 1 second to make the popup menu appear.

• ALT tags & Loading Images: We now show ALT text in images and allow you to load individual images when Auto Load Images is turned off. To load an image, click on the image replacement icon. To follow the image's link, click on the ALT text, or use the popup menu.

• Mail Sending & News Posting Improvements: A new Mail Message window that also includes News Posting capabilities and file attachments.

• Cache Preferences: There are several Preferences available, now, that refer to the Disk cache. You can set the size of this cache through the Preferences window. A larger disk cache means that as you browse, files will be saved on your disk so that when you re-visit them, they are brought up from disk rather than from the network.

  In Netscape 1.0, when you asked for a document already in your cache, Netscape would always contact the original document server and ask for the document's header information, for comparison. This affected the performance of the cache. In 1.1, you can control this through the Cache preference: Verify Documents. If you set this to "Every Time", you will have the same behavior as in Netscape 1.0. "Once per session" means that the document is only checked the first time you use it in a particular Netscape session. "Upon Expiration" means that the server is contacted only if the document's header information indicates that it has expired. For the best cache performance, use "Once per session".

• Security: The US version of the software now supports numerous cipher choices: RC4-40, RC4-128, RC2-40, RC2-128, DES-64, and DES-192. The cipher used in any particular document is displayed in the Document Information dialog box. The export version of the software, including version 1.0, supports only RC4-40.

• News Reading Improvements: Improvements to the News interface, including:
  • A new Preference to set the maximum number of articles to download at a time: this will give much better performance over a modem line.
  • New presentation of newsgroups and articles.
  • MIME-compliant news articles will be presented according to their content type. (This means that news articles may contain HTML, or even encoded JPEG or GIF images. Messages of type multipart/mixed are also understood.)
  • Signature files are now supported in mail and in news
  • Subscribing to groups on multiple news hosts is supported.

• Printing Improvements: Now when you try to Print, the page can be sized to print properly on a page. Check out your Page Setup options.

• Drag & Drop of Links: Drag a link onto desktop to save that link's file to disk.

• Preference window: The preference window has been slightly rearranged.

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  SURFING THE NET IN JAPANESE

  Japanese Character Set Encodings: Netscape Navigator 1.1 Beta has built-in support for browsing Japanese Web sites. Netscape can browse data in any of the three major Japanese character set encodings:
  • JIS (ISO-2022-JP),
  • SJIS (Shift-JIS) and
  • EUC-JP (Extended UNIX Code forJapanese)
  • Line Wrapping for Japanese Text: Netscape relies upon "white space" to determine where to wrap lines when laying out HTML text files in English (and other alphabetic languages).

    Japanese text does not normally include "white space" (e.g., spaces and tabs), so Netscape 1.1 wraps lines at Japanese character boundaries when laying out HTML text files in Japanese.

  • MIME Charset parameter in HTTP: If the MIME charset parameter is included in the HTTP header from the server, Netscape 1.1 parses this parameter to determine the encoding of text file. For example:

       
            Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
               or
    
            Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-2022-jp
    

    The charset names recognized by Netscape 1.1 are specified in RFC 1700 (except for the names that begin with "x-"). These include:

    • us-ascii
    • iso-8859-1
    • iso-2022-jp
    • x-sjis
    • x-euc-jp
    • x-mac-roman

    Netscape also supports aliases for us-ascii:
    ansi_x3.4-1968, iso-ir-6, ansi_x3.4-1986, iso_646.irv:1991, ascii, iso646-us, us, ibm367, cp367.

    Netscape also supports aliases for iso_8859-1:
    latin1, iso_8859-1, iso_8859-1:1987, iso-ir-100, l1, ibm819, cp819.

  • Preferences: If the MIME charset is not specified in the HTTP headers, then Netscape will determine the character set encoding of the text files from a user selectable preference.

  • Document Information: The character set encoding of the current document is included in the "Document Information..." box under the File menu.

  • System Requirements: To surf in Japanese on Windows Japanese Windows is required. It may also work on US Windows if third party Japanese enabling software such as Win/V is being used.

    To surf in Japanese on Macintosh, either KanjiTalk7 or Japanese Language Kit (on System 7) is required.

  • Additional Information: Additional information and Japanese Web pages will be made available at Netscape. Stay tuned.

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  KNOWN PROBLEMS/BUGS

  • Transparent images over backdrops sometimes do not show up as transparent. This is actually a feature. Since transparent images over backdrops take up more memory that ordinary transparent images, if you do not have enough memory to display the image as transparent, it will be displayed as an ordinary image.

  • If you are using the native PowerPC version, if you do not have "ObjectSupportLib" installed, Netscape will crash with system error #11. The "ObjectSupportLib" is a part of AppleScript package. This bug will be fixed in the next release.

  • Sharing of newsrc files is broken. In 1.0, you were able to place an alias to your Newswatcher newsrc file in Netscape preferences folder, and have Netscape update it automatically. With 1.1, Netscape will delete your original newsrc, and create an updated one in its preferences folder.

  • New drag and drop features are only available if you have Drag And Drop installed. The 68K version does not require the drag manager, but the mail window works best if you have it installed. The drag manager is available by FTP from Apple. Using Netscape, you can download it by holding down the option key and clicking here . Netscape will prompt you where to save the file, and download it. It needs to be de-binhexed; Netscape should call the helper app to do that automatically. Then you will have to double click on the resulting Self Extracting Archive. Then you just drag into the Extensions Folder inside the System Folder, and reboot.

  • Printing some pages with forms causes a crash

  • Small backdrops (smaller than 64x64) have corrupted color maps.

  • Progress bar goes yahoo sometimes and gives incorrect information.

  • Garbage characters will appear in textarea widgets that are inside tables. You can simply delete these characters by hand.

  • Selection colors are sometimes mixed up.

  • Blinking is flashing more than it should

  • The background color in form items remains grey, even if you have changed your default background color.

  • ALT text displays with a grey background, even if you have changed your default background color.

  • If Netscape needs to fetch the newsgroup list from the news server, it will display a dialog box with the text "Before you ca". The full text should be:

    	  Before you can view all newsgroups, Netscape
    	  must transfer and save a copy of the newsgroup list.
    	   
    	  If you are using a modem or are on a slow
    	  connection, this could take a few minutes.
    	  Choose New Window from the File menu if you
    	  wish to continue browsing with Netscape.
    

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  Find out more about Netscape at info@netscape.com, or call 415/528-2225.
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