Welcome to Netscape Navigator Version 2.0a2

NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR 2.0a2 FOR WINDOWS

You are using Netscape 2.0 Alpha 2 for Windows. These release notes cover:

Requirements
New Features
Known Problems and Bugs

Netscape Navigator 2.0 Alpha 2 will expire on November 15, 1995.

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. (You can also use the 16-bit Navigator, if you wish).

To run the 32bit Navigator, you MUST have a 32-bit TCP/IP stack. Both Windows 95 and Windows NT provide 32bit TCP/IP stacks that you can setup. If you need help setting up the TCP/IP stack in Windows 95, see http://www.windows95.com.

WHAT'S NEW?

[ Mail,News | Images,HTML | UI | Access ]

Read Mail with the Netscape Navigator

Reading your email: A new Mail Window allows you to read your email, sort the messages, file them in folders, and mail replies.
New Mail Reading Window: The Mail Window has 3 panes: a mail folder pane, a message list pane, and a message text pane. You can adjust the relative sizes of the panes by dragging the pane dividers. You may want to start by making the mail folder pane a little wider so that you can see the names of the mail folders. The individual columns in each pane can be adjusted. Hold the mouse over the column titles. A corner will activate when you're at the end of a column title. You can drag and drop the corner to resize the columns.
Netscape comes with a sample mail message. Click on the "inbox" folder to see the message. You can use the toolbar button or menu to Get New Mail. You can navigate through your mail messages by clicking on the "Date", "Sender", or "Subject" fields of the message list pane. The buttons and Go Menu also help you navigate.
A bold message in the message list signifies that you have not read this message yet. Once you read it, it becomes normal (i.e. unbold).
Organizing your Mail: The Sort Menu allows you to view your list of messages in various ways. You can even thread the messages by subject. The Edit Menu lets you select and delete messages. Deleted messages are put in a mail folder called "trash". You can create other mail folders with the File Menu.

Brand new News Interface

New News Reading Window: The News Reader was re-written to provide a more concise view of the news hosts, newsgroups, and articles. It uses the same type of 3 paned window that the Mail reader uses. Your existing newsrc file is compatible with the new news interface.
Reading News Articles: Reading news is very much like reading mail messages. Instead of Getting New Mail, you can click on the newsgroup to bring up the list of articles and see the new ones that have arrived.

Better Images and Document Presentation

Frames -- Multiple documents on one page: Frames are a way of specifying multiple, independent, scrollable regions, or cells, within a display window. Each frame cell can contain a seperate HTML document. Users can scroll and resize frame cells, at the choice of the frame creator. Cells can also be given NAME values, so they can be targetted by links in other documents, such as other cells within the same frame. These features provide a powerful new way of presenting documents.

Targetted Windows: Browser windows can now have names associated with them. Links in any window can refer to another window by name. When you click on the link, the document you asked for will appear in that named window. If the window is not already open, Netscape will open and name a new window for you.
The syntax for the targetted windows is:
<A HREF="url.html" TARGET="window_name"> Click here and open a New Window </A>
A new BASE tag allows you to pick a default named target window for every link in a document that does not have an explicit TARGET attribute. It's format is:
<BASE TARGET="default_target">
Client-Side Image Maps: We have implemented the Spyglass^TM specification of client-side image maps.
This is similar to server-side ISMAP images, in that you are presented with an image that you can click on to take you to a number of different sites. However, with server-side image maps, the x,y coordinates of the click are sent to the server, and the server decides which URL you see.
With client-side image maps, the MAP that relates parts of the image to different URLs is stored in the current file. This saves a round trip to the server, and should present documents to you faster. Since the MAP information is stored in the document you are viewing, the destination URLs can be displayed in the status area as you pass the mouse over the image map.
Try the client-side image map at the bottom of this page.
Fast, Progressive JPEG images: Support for progressive JPEG images gives you high quality images that load faster than regular JPEG or GIF images. The progressive loading is smoother than the interlaced GIF loading, so you can identify the image sooner.
Single Colormap: Pages with just one image will install a colormap that is customized to image on that page. Your images should be clearer and smoother.
Automatic Dithering: In previous releases, you had to decide between "Dither to Color Cube" and "Use Closest Color in Color Cube". This preference was set for every image on every page.
Now you can specify "Automatic Dithering" and Netscape will make the decision to dither or not for each image on the page. In general, your images should look better with automatic dithering. The old options are still there, so if you want to set them yourself, you can.
The default setting is "Automatic Dithering".
Font Color tag: In addition to specifying font colors for text and links on a whole page, you can use the new COLOR attribute in the FONT tag to choose colors for just part of a page. The syntax for the FONT tag is as follows:
<FONT COLOR="#FF0000">Red</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#00FF00">Green</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#0000FF">Blue</FONT>
DIV tag: We support a new HTML 3.0 tag that lets you

<DIV ALIGN="left">
Left justify text by putting it
within the DIV tags.
</DIV>

<DIV ALIGN="center">
Center some text by putting it
within the DIV tags.
</DIV>

<DIV ALIGN="right">
Right justify some text by putting it
within the DIV tags.
</DIV>
WRAP attribute in the TEXTAREA tag: You can specify how to handle word-wrapping in text input areas in forms.
Support for superscripts and for subscripts.
The <SUP> </SUP> tags let you define ^superscripts.
The <SUB> </SUB> tags let you define _subscripts.
You can Quote me on that -- A stricter HTML parser: The HTML parser now pays close attention to quotes within HTML tags. Check your HTML source for missing quote marks if you see pages that have missing or broken images, or have pieces of text scattered about and overlaying other parts of the document.

User Interfaces

Rearranged Tabbed dialog panels for Preferences: The panels were rearranged and several changes were made to accommodate:
- The new Netscape Mail and News
- Image changes
File Menu | Document Information in an HTML page: Document Information gives you detailed information about all of the images and grid documents in your browser window. The information is displayed in a separate window. You can click on the links in the top half of that window to change the detailed information in the bottom half of the window. It's also a good demonstration of grids.

Access Improvements

HTTP File Upload: Previously, form input was limited to input boxes and other simple elements like checkboxes and radio buttons. Now you can write forms that ask for files as input.
A new "ENCTYPE" attribute on the <FORM> tag allows you to write forms that take files as input. An example of such a form would be:
<FORM ENCTYPE="multipart/form-data" ACTION="_URL_" METHOD=POST>
Send this file: <INPUT NAME="userfile" TYPE="file">
<INPUT TYPE="submit" VALUE="Send File">
</FORM>

KNOWN PROBLEMS/BUGS

Links sometimes don't change colors after being followed.
Save button and Print button in Mail and News window doesn't work.
Read Topic button in Mail window doesn't work.
Can't post to news groups (yet).
Table borders don't display correctly.
Frame borders sometimes don't display correctly after being resized.
In View Bookmarks window, File | Preferences is disabled for now.
Can't use mouse to drag/drop or move the mail message out of your inbox but you can move mail with the Messages->Move and Messages->Copy menus.
In Mail window, cancel from File | Open Folder will give you an Unknown Error message.
In News window, File | Get New Mail does nothing.
In Mail window, File | Compress this folder will give you Out of Memory error.
Cannot cancel out of creating a Mail folder; otherwise you get lots of warning messages.
"Time Left" when ftping or downloading a file doesn't show correct time.
Directory buttons and Location field will disappear after you close the Print Preview window.
Can't use Exchange client for Mail and News like in 1.2.
In Mail preferences, changing Allow 8-bit and MIME compliant options has no effect.
Toolbar buttons don't reflect preference changes immediately unless you Exit and then restart the Navigator.
Can't go to the news server|groups by typing in the URL bar.
Reply All in Mail only replies to the sender.
In Print Preview window, hitting Alt-F4 (or the close button in the title bar) will crash the Navigator. Use the close toolbar button.


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