Welcome to Netscape Navigator Version 1.2 Beta 4

NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR 1.2 BETA 4 FOR WINDOWS

You are using Netscape Navigator 1.2 Beta 4 for Windows. These release notes cover

Requirements
What's New?
Known Problems and Bugs
Notes, Tips and Information

REQUIREMENTS

If you are running Windows 3.1 or WFW, you must use the 16-bit Navigator even if you have Win32s installed.
If you are running Windows 95 or Windows NT, use the 32-bit Navigator.

WHAT'S NEW?

Windows 95 features: The Betas of the Navigator include support for the following Windows 95 requirements:
- Windows 95 look, including tabbed dialogs and proportional scrollbars.
- Long filename support.
Printing Performance: Printing has been optimized in beta 4. Printing speed should be comparable or better than ver 1.1.
MAPI: Win95 users (running the 32bit navigator) can use Microsoft Exchange for sending/receiving mail and posting news. To enable this feature, you need to go to the Mail and News tab in Options/Preferences and make sure "Use exchange client for mail and news" is checked. For installation instructions, see the Readme.
Preferences Window: The Preferences window has been enhanced with tabbed dialogs.
There are also some layout changes, like Fonts and Colors now have separate tabs.
Page Headers: You now have the option to Print Page Headers, which will include the Document Title and/or the URL on every printed page. You can turn this option off from File/Page Setup.
New Bookmark Interface: By popular request, the interface to the bookmark file has been rewritten.
There is a new Bookmark Preferences feature. You can tell Netscape where to add new bookmarks and pick a bookmark header to display in the bookmark menu. To access these preferences from the main browser window, choose Bookmarks/View Bookmarks, then either choose File Menu/Preferences or use the Right Mouse button from the top level bookmark header.
In the main browser window, the View Bookmarks menu item brings up a new Netscape Bookmarks window. New pulldown menus in the Netscape Bookmarks window let you insert headers and separators to produce a hierarchical bookmark file, change the name and other properties of existing bookmark items, import existing bookmark files, search forward through the titles and URLs in your bookmark file, load the URL of a bookmark in the main browser window, and edit the file using standard cut/copy/paste/delete functions.
Bookmark drag and drop was implemented. You can drag and drop items within the Netscape Bookmarks window to rearrange them. Dragging a link from the main browser window to the Netscape Bookmarks window will add it to the bookmark file. Dragging a bookmark from the Netscape Bookmarks window to the main browser window will load a URL in that window.
Registry instead of NETSCAPE.INI for the 32-bit version: There is no NETSCAPE.INI file for the 32-bit version.
The 32-bit version now uses the system registry. The purpose of the registry is to incorporate all the configuration information into a registration database file for controlled access.
To manually edit the Preferences, run regedit.exe . Preferences are stored under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Netscape\Netscape Navigator .
Multi-user Preferences in Windows 95 and Windows NT: If you share your computer with other users, you can personalize your Netscape Preferences settings so that your own settings will be restored when you log on. The next person who logs on to Windows can modify his/her own settings without affecting yours.
In order to enable this multi-user settings feature in Windows 95, you need to modify your Win95's User Profile option, which locates in the Control Panel Passwords property. Make sure the second option in your User Profile, which allows users to customize preferences and desktop settings, is checked.
For Windows NT, you don't have to do anything. Each user automatically gets their own Netscape Preferences setting.
The default values for the Netscape Preferences will be the same for each user. Initially, all users will be set up to share the same bookmarks, cache, cookie, global history, newsrc and temporary directories. If you do not wish to share these files, change the Preference settings to point to your own private copies of the files. To change the location of cookie and global history files, you need to edit the Registry directly. The other files and directories can be set under the Options Menu - Preferences.
Download in a Separate Context: Saving a file to disk via a user request, or downloading a file in order to launch a viewer is now done in a separate context. A modeless dialog box pops up to let you know which URL you are saving, and the destination or viewer. There is a progress bar and cancel button, too. You can continue to surf the net from the window that created the modeless dialog box while downloading.
FTP Featurette: Now Netscape is smarter when the protocol identifier is not specified when entering a URL into the location field. If the hostname is ftp or gopher, Netscape will use those particular protocols. Otherwise Netscape will default to http. Examples:
Entering: ftp.netscape.com
Will give: ftp://ftp.netscape.com
When logging in to your ftp account, Netscape will now automatically go to your home directory; instead of the root directory.
Bug fixes:
- Image display:
  - Transparent GIFs display faster, especially over a background image.
  - Scaled transparent GIFs appear transparent.
- Hot keys in Page Setup Dialog now work correctly.
- Many printing bugs are fixed
  - Header and footer fonts are normal size
  - Long titles and URLs don't overlap
  - Cannon BJC 600 and 4000 printers work (make sure you have the latest drivers)
  - Printing forms improved
  - Printing on PCL printers improved
  - Epson Color Stylus printers work
  - Pages with horizontal rules print on Postscript printers
  - Bullets print (Not the exact same shape)
  - Tables longer than one page print
  - Borders on tables are centered correctly
  - Newsgroup articles print correctly
  - A blank page doesn't print at the end of each print job
  - Images print better
- NAPLAYER nows works with Windows 95
- Changes to Helper Applications Preferences are now persistent between sessions.
- Cache Bug: A bug in the disk cache was fixed which would sometimes cause Netscape to present out-of-date documents.
  IMPORTANT: After upgrading to 1.2 it is recommended that you flush your disk cache to remove any incorrect information that may have been saved by an earlier release of the Netscape Navigator.
- Window Icon: Netscape now only has one icon per window
- Table Fixes: Lots of bug fixes with table layout
- You can now start printing while downloading a page
- Bookmark Fixes:
  - Moving an empty header up past a separator no longer removes it from the menu.
  - You can use the Options | Preferences | Applications and Directories menu to change from one bookmark file to another.
- Preferences Fix: The Preferences window now remembers which tabbed dialog you are in, so that the next time you go to preferences, you will be were you left off.
- The Navigator is better at handling transparent images over background images.
- Moving the mouse while clicking on a link is more tolerant.

KNOWN PROBLEMS/BUGS

MAPI

You can't include OLE objects in messages.
Rich text format is not supported.
You can't send mail using CC (carbon copy) unless you fill out the "To" field.

Printing

PCL printers may not print the document header name even if this option is selected. The position of the page number may not print in the same place.

Printing from Win95 will sometimes display the warning message:
"Unable to start print job due to insufficient memory or invalid printer specification"
If you get this message try printing again.

Text Color

There is still a problem that if the background and text colors are the same selections will not show up (since we indicate selected text by flipping the text and background colors). For this reason we strongly recommend that authors set both text and background colors when using images as page backdrops.

Tables

In rare cases, selecting text across multiple cells of a table can cause Netscape to go into an infinite loop.

Backgrounds and Transparency

In 16 color VGA mode, images with transparent backgrounds do not show properly over other background images. Instead of transparent, the background is opaque, usually black.

Image Display Bugs

For video boards with Cirrus Logic video chip sets on them, and possibly for other makers, an image can be displayed that may occasionally cause the program to "freeze" or GP Fault in the video driver. If this happens, ensure you are using the latest versions of drivers for your video board. You can download the latest version of the Cirrus Logic video driver from their ftp site ftp://ftp.cirrus.com

When a page (with an image on it) is re-sized so that the horizontal scroll bar appears, sometimes the right edge of the image does not draw all the way to the right edge of the window. The width of the vertical blank area on the right is about the width of the left margin, and is the color of the background.

When the video driver is in 4, 16, or 24 bits per pixel mode, drawing transparent images over backdrop images may have black flicker during drawing. This does not happen when video mode is 8 bits per pixel.

Asynchronous DNS

If you think your winsock is not handling Async DNS correctly, try setting the Async option in the Windows 95 Registry or NETSCAPE.INI file to "no,"

    [Network]
    use Async DNS=no

The default is to use Async DNS, not using it will result in lower performance and can cause problems when multiple simultaneous connections are attempted. You can also set

    [Network]
    Max Connections=1

which will prevent problems when not using Async DNS but will also result in much slower performance.

PC-NFS from Sun and Spry's newly updated stack are the only winsocks we know of that require setting the "Async DNS" flag to "no".

Bookmarks

If you have 3 folders in a row, you can't shuffle them using drag and drop or cut/copy/paste. Moving an item immediately after a folder/header will put the item IN the folder instead of AFTER it. You can, however, close the folder, hightlight it, and then INSERT items after it. Then you can drag other folders and bookmarks after that item you INSERT-ed.

Using the Properties window to remove the Name of a Bookmark or Header will remove it from the menu. Restoring the Name will restore the item to the bookmark menu.

The unsupported Mozilize utility doesn't convert hierarchical NCSA Mosaic hotlists.

Preferences

The Apply and Help buttons in Preferences are greyed out and don't work.

NOTES, TIPS, AND INFORMATION

Audio Player Note

The Netscape Setup program will not delete your old Netscape audio player. If you don't have version 1.2 of the audio player, you must delete the old Netscape audio player (NAPLAYER.EXE) and reinstall Netscape to get it.

Export Only

This release is exportable, and you will not be able to connect to using high-grade encryption keys.

Norton Desktop 3.0

Turn FileAssist OFF if you are having problems using Netscape's Find function.

Highlighting more than one Screen

To highlight more than one screen of text in a document, position the mouse where you want to start selecting text. Hold the mouse button down while pressing the down arrow key

Importing Hotlists as Bookmarks

Netscape has an import command on the Bookmarks window that will read any HTML file containing links and convert those links into bookmarks. If you would like to import your NCSA Hotlist into Netscape, you can use the Mozilize utility to convert your hotlist to a Netscape style bookmark list. This program is unsupported so your results may vary.

Helper Applications

For telnet, ftp, and for displaying audio and video, Netscape uses "Helper Applications". These applications are configured in your Preferences window. For help configuring this window, check out our documentation: Helper Applications

On Windows, LVIEW31.EXE (for JPEG images), MPEGPLAY.EXE (for MPEG movies), and WHAM.EXE (for audio files) are all useful applications. One site where these can be found is ftp://ftp.cica.indiana.edu, but that site is often difficult to reach. You can also try the mirror site on ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/micro/msdos/win3/.

The files you want are:


Gif/Jpeg:
---------

ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/micro/msdos/win3/desktop/lview31.zip


MPEG:
-----

ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/micro/msdos/win3/desktop/mpegv11d.zip

ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/micro/msdos/win3/desktop/mpegw32g.zip


Video for Windows (AVI)
-----------------------

ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/micro/msdos/win3/desktop/avipro2.exe


Audio
-----

ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/micro/msdos/win3/sounds/wham133.zip

How do I use Netscape without a network connection?

If you do not have a network connection but still want to user Netscape to browse local files you should get the file mozock.dll. If you install this file as winsock.dll Netscape will work fine with local file reads. Be sure to shift-click on the above link or else Netscape will treat it as a text document. Doh! If you want to get out to the rest of the net mozock.dll is not for you.

What happened to the Background "Fade-in" and multiple text colors?

Previous versions of the Navigator would recognize multiple <BODY> tags. This allowed people to "fade-in" pages or have multiple text colors. This was a bug in the Navigator. The <BODY> tag is specifically designed to separate the header and footer from the body of a page. It is illegal HTML to have more than one <BODY> tag per page. The newer versions of the Navigator will only recognize the first <BODY> tag. Later ones will be ignored.


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