Bij C|NET hebben ze een blik geworpen op Preview Release 2 van Netscape 6.0 die je hier kunt neerladen. Over het algemeen werd deze nieuwe versie goed ontvangen; hij is duidelijk sneller dan zijn voorgangers en heeft een aantal leuke en handige features meegekregen. Er zijn echter nog wel een aantal zaken waar hard aan gewerkt moet worden voordat de final versie eind dit jaar uit zal komen. Onverwachte crashes zijn nog steeds aanwezig en opstarten lijkt eeuwig te duren:
Netscape 6 Preview Release 2 is a little less preview-ish than PR1. But we still don't recommend replacing your current browser with it yet. This release didn't crash on our test machines quite as often as PR1, but it still crashed at unexpected times, such as when we tried to open the Preferences dialog box. However, at least the crashes were confined to the app itself and never brought down the operating system.
Thankfully, PR2 corrects some of the installation problems we saw in PR1. We were able to install Java 2 on all of our test machines, for instance (PR1 failed on a couple Windows 98 machines). However, starting Netscape 6 is an exercise in patience. It's just about the slowest-loading program we've ever seen, though this latest release seems a tad faster than PR1. There's still a good deal of performance tuning ahead for Netscape engineers--or at least we hope there is.
Nonetheless, we were impressed by what we saw. Netscape 6 has lots of promise. The Gecko rendering engine is fast and far more standards compliant than its predecessor. The email application has a solid feature set, including innovative integration with Netscape's and AOL's instant messengers. And security features such as the Cookie Manager and encrypted password storage will help make Web surfing safer and more secure.
But Netscape does have a problem. With all of these public preview releases, the company has tipped its hand and may have given Microsoft a head start on features to include in Internet Explorer 6. The final Netscape release is not planned until much later this year--probably the end of the year--so the Redmond folks will have plenty of time to catch up. Between now and then, Netscape will have to work hard to improve its browser's stability and performance and to stay one step ahead of Microsoft in the features war.
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