ZDNET meldt dat Netscape volgende maand een beta versie zal releasen van het lang uitgestelde Communicator 5.0. Het complete verhaaltje lees je hier.
Netscape officials claim Communicator 5.0 will be worth the wait. It's a "groundbreaking" product for the industry and consumers, said Chris Saito, senior director of client product marketing at Netscape, in Mountain View, Calif.The new components to the upgrade -- the Gecko rendering engine, along with XML, Document Object Model, HTML 4.0 and Cascading Style Sheets support -- bring Communicator up to speed with IE 5.0, almost a year after Microsoft released its upgrade.
The reasons for Communicator's delay are many, but most observers put the blame on AOL's acquisition of Netscape late last year and the decision to transfer all Communicator development to the open-source Mozilla project.
"I, for one, have been disappointed with the outcome of Mozilla," said Mike Prince, chief information officer of Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse Corp., of Burlington, N.J., which uses Netscape. "I'm not sure in an open-system environment Netscape will even wind up being the surviving browser."