AOL unleashes Netscape 6

As expected, America Online (AOL) released the first public preview of Netscape 6, its next-generation, standards-based Web browser suite. With this first truly componentized version of Netscape, users can download and install only those modules they desire, making for much smaller and quicker downloads. Available components include the ubiquitous Web browser, an email client, instant messaging, and a Web phone. But the most compelling feature of Netscape 6 is its amazing "Gecko" rendering engine, which fully supports a variety of Web standards such as XML, HTML, CSS1, and the W3C Document Object Model (DOM) Levels 0 and 1. The Gecko engine is blazingly fast, and because it's portable, Web sites will look identical on all of the platforms that Netscape 6 supports, currently Windows, Macintosh, and Linux.

Less successful is the Netscape 6 user interface, a cluttered mess that is ironically also based on the Gecko rendering technology. In sharp contrast to HTML pages, which are rendered quickly and accurately, the client apps in Netscape 6 draw at glacial pace. And like other HTML and HTML-like user interfaces, Netscape has had to recreate standard Win32 user interface elements such as buttons, drop-down lists, and radio buttons, creating a curiously muddled user interface that seems unrefined and old-fashioned. Linux users may not be nonplussed by such a thing, but I suspect many Windows users will be unimpressed.

Still, Netscape 6 Preview Release 1 is an interesting look at a true standards-based Web browser, and unlike IE 5.5 Beta, it's recommended for most users, as it won't wipe out any existing browsers on your system. If you're willing to put up with some UI werdisms, it's worth a look. You can download Netscape 6 PR1 from the Netscape Web site