Welcome to Netscape Navigator 3.04

NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR FOR WINDOWS
VERSION 3.04

These release notes cover:

Other Information:

Look in the Help Menu under Handbook
Look in the Help Menu under Frequently Asked Questions
CoolTalk by InSoft
CoolTalk Frequently Asked Questions
Helper Applications
Plug-in SDK (Software Development Kit)
Release notes for earlier betas and other releases.

WHAT'S NEW SINCE 2.0?

General Features
Layout Features
Message Composition and Viewing Improvements
MIME Parser Improvements
Macintosh-only Changes
Windows-only Changes
UNIX-only Changes
LiveConnect
JavaScript
Java
Security
International Character Encodings
LiveAudio
LiveVideo
QuickTime
CoolTalk

General Features

New Directory buttons: The directory button toolbar now includes Destinations and People. Net Directory and Handbook have been removed.
New Directory menu items: The Directory menu now has items for Netscape Destinations and People. Internet Directory and Internet White Pages have been removed.
New Navigation for Frames and the Back button: Now, when you click on a link that updates a frame, pressing the Back button returns you to the previous state of the frame. Previously, pressing the Back button ignored updates within a page's frames and always returned you to the previous whole page (further back than you probably wanted). In short, navigating among frames now works on a per frame basis: pressing Back revisits the previous frame and pressing Forward revisits the frame ahead.
Three-pane configurability: A pane layout option has been added to the Mail and News|Appearance panel (choose the Options|Mail and News Preferences|Appearance menu item). The panel offers radio buttons to designate the layout of the three panes in the Mail and News windows. Choose Split Horizontal (Articles on top on Macintosh) to align the message content pane to the right of the two split panes. Choose Split Vertical (Articles on left on Macintosh) to align the message content pane below the two split panes. Choose Stack (Stacked on Macintosh) to align the message content pane below the two stacked panes (layered in rows atop one another).
Show recipient in Sent Folder and Outbox: When you select a mail folder by clicking on it, the message heading pane displays the titles of messages contained in that folder. In previous versions, you'd always see the title Sender above a column that shows the name of the sender of the mail message. Now, in the Outbox and Sent Mail folders, you'll see the title Recipient instead of Sender, and the column shows the email address of the mail recipient. For sent mail, the recipient info is much more useful than the sender info (typically yourself).
Compressed headers: When viewing either the Mail or News window, the Options menu now offers a cascading (hierarchical) menu items called Show Headers that replaces the Show All Headers item. The new menu item gives you more options to control the number of header information fields displayed when viewing messages. All displays all possible header fields. Normal displays the primary address fields. Brief displays only subject and recipient fields.
Netscape Navigator Gold: Netscape Navigator Gold has been updated for Win32 and Mac. Gold now lets you edit tables.
New Network preferences panels: New Network|Protocols and Network|Languages preference panels to expand and improve user preferences for security and privacy control.
POP3 servers: The Keep Mail on Server and Maximum Message Size options now work even with POP3 servers that do not implement the UIDL command.
Special characters: Additional entity names such as "&pound" are now implemented.

Layout Features

Frame Border Control: You can use the FRAMEBORDER, BORDER, and BORDERCOLOR attributes to control the display type, width, and color of frame borders. For precise control of border appearance, use all three attributes.

The FRAMEBORDER attribute determines how frame borders are displayed (outline-3D or plain). The attribute can be set with the value FRAMEBORDER=YES (outline-3D border) or FRAMEBORDER=NO (plain border), and can be used in the <FRAMESET> tag or the <FRAME> tag. The default is FRAMEBORDER=YES. When used in the <FRAMESET> tag, the FRAMEBORDER attribute sets the default value for all frames in the frameset. When used in the <FRAME> tag, the attribute applies only to the particular frame, overriding any frameset attribute. Because borders are shared between frames, a border will be plain only if all adjacent frames have their attribute set FRAMEBORDER=NO.

The BORDER attribute determines the thickness of frame borders for all frames in a frameset tag. The attribute can be set with a value from 0 to N, and can only be used on the outermost <FRAMESET> (not on a per-frame basis). For example, setting BORDER=0 positions adjacent frames with no border space between them, BORDER=3 positions adjacent frames with 3 pixels of border space between them, and so on. The default is BORDER=5.

Remember, when neither a FRAMEBORDER or BORDER attribute is specified, the default is an outline-3D frame with a width of 5. Setting FRAMEBORDER=NO without a BORDER attribute displays a plain border with a width of 5. Unless you explicitly specify BORDER=0, a frame border is displayed.

Note also that when FRAMEBORDER=YES and BORDER is used, the thicker, outline borders acquire a 3-D appearance.

The BORDERCOLOR attribute determines the color of frame borders. The attribute can be set with a color name or RGB value, and can be used in the <FRAMESET> tag or the <FRAME> tag. When used in the <FRAME> tag, the attribute attempts to set the colors of the frame's borders. When used in the <FRAMESET> tag, the attribute attempts to set the colors of all borders of all frames in the frameset.

Because frame borders are shared, border color conflicts are resolved as follows: The attribute appearing in the outer <FRAMESET> has the lowest priority. This is, in turn, overridden by the attribute used in a nested <FRAMESET> tag. Finally, the BORDERCOLOR attribute used in a <FRAME> tag overrides all previous <FRAMESET> tag uses. If there is a conflict for two colors of equal priority both set on the same edge, the behavior is undefined.

Multi-Column Text: The <MULTICOL> tag is a container, and all the HTML between the starting and ending tag will be displayed in a multi-column format. The tag can be nested, although multi-column text within multi-column text becomes quickly unreadable. The attributes of this tag are COLS, GUTTER, and WIDTH.

The COLS attribute is mandatory and controls how many columns the display will be split into. Layout will attempt to flow elements evenly across the columns to make each column have about the same height. Unless the WIDTH attribute is specified, column with is adjusted to fill the available view.

The GUTTER attribute controls the pixels of space between columns. It defaults to a value of 10.

The WIDTH attribute controls the width of an individual column. All columns are always the same width, so the overall width of a multi-column layout is:
(cols * width) + ((cols - 1) * gutter)

Horizontal and Vertical Spacing: A new tag called <SPACER> provides better control over the spacing of objects and whitespace in HTML pages. The attributes to spacer are TYPE, SIZE, WIDTH, HEIGHT, and ALIGN.

The TYPE attribute has three possible values: horizontal, vertical, and block. These correspond to the three types of spacing control delineated above. The default value is horizontal.

The horizontal spacer inserts horizontal space between words. The width of the space is controlled by the SIZE attribute.
The vertical spacer inserts vertical space between lines. Implicit in this spacer is a line break to end the current line, then the vertical space is added before the beginning of the next line. The height of the space is controlled by the SIZE attribute.
The block spacer behaves almost exactly like an invisible image. When using this type of spacer the SIZE attribute is ignored, and instead the WIDTH, HEIGHT, and ALIGN attributes are applied just as they would be for the <IMG> tag.

The WIDTH attribute only applies when the spacer is of type block. Then this attribute controls the absolute width in pixels of the spacing rectangle added.

The HEIGHT attribute only applies when the spacer is of type block. Then this attribute controls the absolute height in pixels of the spacing rectangle added.

The ALIGN attribute only applies when the spacer is of type block. Then this attribute controls the alignment of the spacing rectangle in exactly the same way it would control the alignment of an <IMG> tag.

Strikeout and Underline Text: Netscape has always supported strikeout text in the form of the <STRIKE> tag. Now Netscape also supports an alternative syntax, the <S> tag, while maintaining support for the <STRIKE> tag as backwards compatibility.

Netscape now supports underlined text using the <U> tag. The tag causes all text between the start and end tag to have a solid underline drawn along the common baseline of the text.

JavaScript Evaluation in HTML: JavaScript evaluation in HTML attribute values allows JavaScript to be dynamically evaluated in the right-hand side of an HTML attribute name/value pair (that is, when calculating the values of HTML attributes). This allows the attributes of one HTML element to depend on information about previously placed elements on the page.

JavaScript evaluation uses the HTML entity sequence as follows:

< == "<"

Where "&" denotes the start of an entity, and ";" terminates it. In this case a dynamic entity is in the form of a JavaScript expression enclosed in curly braces:

&{javascript_expression}; == "returned_string"

JavaScript entities concatenate with the surrounding text:

"&{10 * 10};%" == "100%"

JavaScript entities can only be interpreted on the right-hand side of HTML attribute name/value pairs.

FONT FACE=fontName: The FONT FACE attribute lets you specify the names of specific fonts as your preferred font choices in the format:

<FONT FACE="font1,font2,fontN"> </FONT>

For example, if font1 is not available, font2 is used. If no specified font is available, the default font is used. COLOR and SIZE attributes can be specified along with the FACE attribute.

<FONT FACE="Garamond,Helvetica,Times"> </FONT>

Support table cell background colors: You can specify a background color to be used when displaying table cells. To specify a table background color use the bgcolor attribute. Nested tables inherit background colors.

Color Cells
One Color
Another Color

bgcolor

table

Here's the HTML that produced the table on the right.

<TABLE ALIGN=RIGHT BORDER=1 WIDTH=20%>
 <CAPTION CENTER Valign=BOTTOM>Color Cells</CAPTION>
 <TR><TD BGCOLOR=#ffdddd>One Color</TD></TR>
 <TR><TD BGCOLOR=#ccffff>Another Color</TD></TR>
</TABLE>

Message Composition and Viewing Improvements

Long-line Wrapping in Message Composition window: The new Message Composition window menu item View|Wrap Long Lines, when checked, automatically line-wraps the messages you send such that no line is longer than 72 characters. The width of the Message Composition window does not affect line-wrapping, nor are the line breaks you see necessarily the wrapping that is sent. When unchecked, messages are sent without automatic line-wrapping and the line breaks that you see are sent. The default is checked.

In previous versions, long lines were wrapped at the width of the window. This gave a "What You See Is What You Get" aspect to the message composition window. Regardless of whether the sender had allowed text to auto-wrap, or had hit return at the end of every line, or had resized the window, the recipient of the message would see the same line breaks as the sender.

However, problems occurred when senders made their composition windows very wide for ease of editing. It was very easy to accidentally send out messages with long lines that exceeded the 80 column limit. To many recipients, such messages would be very difficult to read.

In this version, outgoing text is wrapped at 72 columns, regardless of the size of the window. This makes the composition window less WYSIWYG, but it does make it much harder to accidentally generate unreadable messages.

There is (and has been) a single exception to the line wrapping rule: Lines which have the character > as their first character are never wrapped. Such lines are usually a part of quoted text and it is important to preserve the special character at the start of each line.

It is also still true that lines beginning with > will appear to be wrapped in the Message Composition window if the lines are longer than the window is wide. This is a property of the platform-provided text editors. At the time the message is sent, these lines will be effectively unwrapped.

Since the column at which word-wrapping occurs is no longer tied to the size of the window, the Wrap Long Lines option has been added to turn off word-wrapping on the Message Composition window. This is for the less common case where you need to send a message with specially-formatted text such as wide tables or charts, or data where wrapping the lines would damage the data.

When this option is selected, two things happen: First, the text area no longer does word-wrapping (a horizontal scrollbar will be presented instead). Second, the generated message will have exactly the line breaks that the user inserted explicitly and no automatic wrapping of any kind will occur.

The default for the option is to wrap lines and the option is not persistent. If you turn wrapping off, the particular composition window is affected only this one time (since no-wrapping is an unusual case).

Long-line Wrapping in Mail and News windows: The new menu item in the Mail and News windows View|Wrap Long Lines, when checked, displays long lines in the message in shorter, more numerous lines. When unchecked, long lines are more likely to extend off the screen and require the horizontal scroll bar for viewing. The default is unchecked.

Messages marked as text/plain should have preformatted line breaks so that the text does not require reformatting or wrapping. However, two forms of messages cause problems:

First, there are the messages which have line breaks at the end of each line, but which have lines which are too long (say, 100 character lines rather than 79 character lines.) Such messages were easy to generate with earlier versions of Netscape by simply making the Message Composition window wider than its default size.

Second, there are the messages which only have line breaks at the end of each paragraph. These messages are generated by software which does not understand the requirements of Internet mail and inappropriately assumes that the recipient of the message will always be able to rewrap the messages.

To address both types of message, the Wrap Long Lines option has been added to the View menu on both the Mail and News windows. This allows lines which are longer than the width of the window to be wrapped. Turning this option on will probably make correctly-formatted messages look worse, however, for messages which are incorrectly formatted with overly long lines, the option makes the messages readable.

Note that though there are now line-wrapping options on both the Message Composition window, and on the Mail and News windows, they do very different things. The former affects the actual text that will be mailed out; the latter merely controls the presentation of received messages without actually altering them.

MIME Parser Improvements

The MIME message display engine has been significantly improved. A number of new features have been added and a number of bugs have been fixed.

When saving attachments, a more reasonable default file name will be used: In earlier versions, the Save This Link As command (and its shortcut, the shift-click or option-click gesture) did not generally offer a good default file name when prompting for the place to save the attachment. This is now fixed: the suggested file name should always be the original name of the attached document.
Support for uuencoded data in non-MIME messages is greatly improved: In previous versions of Netscape, uuencoded pseudo-attachments were not handled as well as full-fledged MIME attachments; the handling of uuencoded data in non-MIME messages should now be virtually indistinguishable from real MIME attachments, from the end user's point of view.

In previous versions, uuencoded data was automatically decoded only if it appeared to be on of the built-in image types (GIF, JPEG, and XBM); and once the uuencoded data was encountered, it was considered to extend from the begin line to the end of the message. This has been fixed:

Any number of uuencoded segments in a message will be displayed as attachments: the uuencoded data is considered to extend from the begin to the end line, and then the remainder of the message will be presented in the usual way.
Any type of uuencoded data will be treated as an attachment, not just images. If the extension on the name of the attached file is one that indicates that it is a GIF, JPEG, or XBM, then the attachment will be decoded and displayed inline; otherwise, it will be presented as a normal attachment link, making it easy to decode and save the data to a file.
The View Attachments as Links menu item now affects the presentation of uuencoded attachments in the same way it has always affected MIME attachments.
When uuencoded attachments are saved, they will always be decoded first, just as base64-encoded data is.

BinHex data is recognized in non-MIME messages: In much the same way that we notice the presence of uuencoded data in non-MIME messages, we now also notice BinHex data.
Sun MailTool attachments are supported: Attachments of the form generated by Sun's MailTool (messages of type x-sun-attachment) are recognized, and displayed just like normal MIME messages.
The multipart/alternative MIME type is supported: The multipart/alternative Content-Type is a container that includes different versions of the same document; for example, a text/plain version, followed by a text/html version, followed by an application/postscript version. Netscape will present to the user only one of the versions, the highest ``resolution'' version that can be displayed inline.

Netscape does not currently have the ability to generate messages which contain multipart/alternative data, but it is now capable of displaying it (for compatibility with existing and future mailers which do generate such messages.)

The message/external-body MIME type is supported: The message/external-body Content-Type is a MIME representation of what is essentially a URL: it describes a method for retrieving a document from the net. The directly-supported message/external-body access methods are ftp, anon-ftp, local-file, afs, mail-server, and url.
Uuencoded data is only recognized in non-MIME messages: We no longer recognize uuencoded data in arbitrary parts of type text/plain: we now only do this auto-recognition in messages which have no Content-Type specified. That is, if the message is a full-fledged MIME message, we always believe the Content-Type of that message. If it says it's plain text, then we treat it as plain text and don't play guessing games behind its back.

However, if the message does not have a Content-Type, then it is not a MIME message, and we assume that it may contain either text, or uuencoded data, or BinHex data, or any combination thereof.

So if you come across a message that contains uuencoded data, and we did not present it as an attachment, then that's probably because that message was generated by simply pasting the uuencoded data into the main body of the message with a MIME-compliant mailer.

The proper way to send uuencoded data with a MIME-compliant mailer is to attach the uuencoded file to the message, so that it shows up as a MIME part, with some non-text Content-Type, and x-uuencode as its Content-Transfer-Encoding.

Macintosh-only Changes

Open Transport native: Native support for Apple Open Transport.
Internet Config: Basic Internet Config features are supported. Internet Config is a public domain system extension that lets you configure Internet information such as email address and server names in a single source location. This is useful if you are using multiple Internet applications. Supporting applications can find this information, making it unnecessary for you to enter the same information in each of your Internet applications.
Tooltips: An item in the Options|General Preferences|Appearance panel lets you turn on tooltips so that when the mouse stays over a toolbar button, tooltip text appears.
Unread mail and news messages: Are now marked in bold.
Helpers panel: The Options|General Preferences|Helpers panel has been redesigned to simplify editing, adding, and deleting helper applications and plug-ins.
User-interface improvements: Several minor changes regarding fonts, spacing, and tabs. Improved design in toolbar and preferences panels.
Enable active scrolling option:The General|Appearance preference panel has a check box to allow active window scrolling. When checked, movement of the scroll bar thumb causes the content area to scroll as you drag. When unchecked, movement of the scroll bar thumb causes the content area to scroll only after the mouse button is released. The default is checked. On slower computers, scrolling performance might improve when the setting is unchecked.

Windows-only Changes

Forms Printing: The printing of forms has been improved.
Image Presentation: Image outlines and alt text are presented before image loading.
Set as Wallpaper: A menu item has been added to the pop-up that lets you use a specified image as the screen background image. Point the mouse cursor over any image, pres the right-mouse button, then select the Set as Wallpaper menu item.

Unix-only Changes

Plug-in support on UNIX platforms: SGI IRIX, SunOS, Solaris 2.3, Solaris 2.4, DEC OSF/1, HP/UX, and Linux 1.2 (ELF).
Frame Source and Frame Info: The View menu has items for Frame Source and Frame Info, available when a frame is selected.
Unix versions of Navigator 3.04 now contain an option on the right mouse menu to "Add Bookmark for this Frame".
Quoted text color: The Mail and News Preferences|Appearance panel has a field that lets you enter the color of your quoted text.
Hide menu bar: The Options menu has an item to let you hide the menu bar. Use the right mouse button to display the pop-up menu containing an item to show the menu bar again.
Drag-and-drop attachments: To create an attachment, you can drag a mail message item from the message pane to the attachment field of the Composition window.
Drag-and-drop news: You can drag News window articles to store them in Mail window folders.
HP/UX: The HP/UX binary has been linked dynamically.
Helpers panel: The Options|General Preferences|Helpers panel has been redesigned to simplify editing, adding, and deleting helper applications and plug-ins.

LiveConnect

Java, JavaScript, and Plug-in Connectivity: Netscape's LiveConnect lets you integrate Java, JavaScript and Navigator plug-ins. This allows you to create plug-ins and applets that can be controlled by Java and JavaScript, or use Java and JavaScript to implement portions of your plug-in. Fundamentally, LiveConnect allows you to call:

Java methods from plug-ins.
Native methods implemented in plug-ins from Java.
Java methods from JavaScript.
JavaScript from Java methods.

LiveConnect Developer Information

Help|Handbook

Disabling LiveConnect: LiveConnect is disabled if either Java or JavaScript is disabled in the Options|Network Preferences|Languages panel.

JavaScript

JavaScript-generated documents: JavaScript-generated documents can be printed, saved as files, and viewed with View Document/Frame Source.
Resizing a JavaScript-generated document modifies location field: When you resize a Javascript-generated document, the following text appears in the location field as a prefix to the URL:

wysiwyg://(id)/

where (id) after the literal 'wysiwyg://' and before the third '/' is automatically generated.

Resizing a window reloads its documents from cache: Previously, resizing caused JavaScript to rerun the same scripts as when the page first loaded. Now, the document is reloaded from cache (scripts are not rerun, the load and unload events are not sent, and user-defined variables and properties are not reinitialized). There is currently one exception: Resizing can cause HTML objects such as forms and links to lose their user-set properties (the objects are reflected again by the reload).
NOSCRIPT tag: A <NOSCRIPT>...</NOSCRIPT> tag has been added so that if a user has JavaScript turned off in the Network|Languages preferences panel or if a user's browser application does not support JavaScript, the user sees the HTML between the noscript tag and its end tag.
SRC attribute: The <SCRIPT> tag now has an additional attribute that allows a JavaScript file to be specified as the JavaScript source (rather than embedding the JavaScript in the HTML). Attributes within the SCRIPT tag can now be specified as follows:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE=JavaScript SRC=mySource.js>

where mySource.js is the URL (relative or full address) of the JavaScript source code file.

The LANGUAGE attribute is mandatory unless the SRC attribute is present and specifies the scripting language. The SRC attribute is optional and, if given, specifies a URL that loads the text of a script. Both attributes may be present.

The SRC attribute specifies the scripting language by using the .js suffix. The suffix must be mapped by the web server to the MIME type "application/x-javascript" which the server sends back in the HTTP GET reply's Content-type: header. Without a properly configured server (one that maps .js filename suffix to application/x-javascript MIME), Netscape won't respond properly with the data coming back in the HTTP response to the SRC-initiated request.

Data tainting security model: You can set NS_ENABLE_TAINT to enable JavaScript in one window to see properties of a second window, regardless of which server provided the second window's document. When JavaScript in the first window attempts to send to a server (other than the one that originated the data) data derived from the second window's tainted properties, a confirming dialog is brought up so that the user can cancel or confirm the transaction.

To set NS_ENABLE_TAINT:

On UNIX, use setenv.
On Windows, use set.
On Macintosh, edit the resource with type 'Envi' and number 128 in the Netscape application by removing the two ascii slashes "//" before the NS_ENABLE_TAINT text at the end of the resource.

untainted = untaint(document.form1.input3)
// now untainted can be sent in a URL or form post by other scripts

Neither taint() nor untaint() modifies its single argument. Rather, both functions return a marked or unmarked reference to the argument object, or a copy of the primitive type value (number or boolean value).

JavaScript reflection of plug-ins: Allows developers to dynamically determine what plug-ins are installed on the client. By making the list of installed plug-ins accessible through JavaScript, content developers can write simple scripts to display embedded plug-in data if the appropriate plug-in is installed, or display some alternative information (image, text, etc.) if not.

JavaScript currently has a global "navigator" object which contains properties for information not associated with any particular document. This object now has two additional properties: a "mimeTypes" object and a "plugins" object.

The mimeTypes object is an array of all MIME types supported by the client (either internally, via helper apps, or by plug-ins). Each element of the array is a mimeType object, which has properties for its type, description, and file extensions.

The plugins object is an array of all plug-ins currently installed on the client. Each element of the array is a plugin object, which has properties for its name and description, as well as a subarray of mimetype objects for the types supported by that plugin.

Java

The APPLET tag now supports an ARCHIVE attribute: This can improve applet download time by reducing the number of HTTP connections required to fetch applet code. Example:

  <applet archive="Nuclear.zip"
    code="NuclearPlant.class"
    width=680 height=473>
  </applet>


This will cause the file Nuclear.zip to be downloaded to the user's
disk, and will search it for the NuclearPlant class and the classes it
requires. The zip file is found relative to the codebase path, and must
not be compressed.  Classes not in the zip file will still be searched
for via the old mechanism if required.

Compatible with the JDK: The Java implementation is now compatible with the Java Developers Kit (JDK version 1.0.2) from Sun.
Mac Support: Java support has been added to the Macintosh Power PC and 68K platforms allowing users to run Java applets. Applets are software programs written in the Java language that can be integrated within HTML pages.
UNIX Support: Java support has been added to the IBM AIX and BSDI platforms. The Java implementation is now compatible with version 1.0.2 of the JDK from Sun.
Unicode Support: Java applets will now display all Unicode characters which can be rendered with an existing system font. Support is no longer limited to the Latin-1 subset of Unicode: Support is provided for Western (Latin 1) and Central European (Latin 2) languages, as well as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. This feature is currently available on the UNIX and Macintosh platforms.
Win 32 JIT Compiler: On Windows 32 computers, a just-in-time compiler translates Java bytecodes into Intel machine code which makes many Java programs execute substantially faster.
Windows AWT toolkit: A completely new implementation of the AWT toolkit fixes many bugs.
JavaScript interaction using LiveConnect: There is now a new attribute for the APPLET tag called MAYSCRIPT which is required for an applet that wishes to use LiveConnect and the netscape.javascript classes to interact with JavaScript.
Java security: Programming notes on Java security.

To protect the privacy of applets, System.in, System.out, and System.err have been made "final" (they are effectively constants, and can not be changed by applets).
Thread.suspend() can result in deadlocking the Java subsystem (for example, suspend an applet that is holding system critical resources). The call has been annotated with a warning that prints on the Java Console when this method is invoked. Use of the call should be avoided. Future releases might not support the call.
For the privacy of each applet, Thread.stop(t) (the version that takes an argument) is now restricted to only take an instance of a ThreadDeath class. Passing other types results in a security exception.

Security

New section in Security preferences panel: New Secure Network Protocol section in Security|General Preferences to control access to SSL v2 and SSL v3.
Security Preferences: Two new security preference panels have been added to enable new security features.

Personal Certificate panel: Personal certificates identify you to others on the Internet. For example, when you submit information in a form, your personal certificate allows the recipient of the form to know the information came from you and no one else.

You may wish to obtain more than one personal certificate. Some web sites may request (and issue to you) a personal certificate for specific use with their site. You may also obtain more generic personal certificates that represent you for credit card transactions or other nonspecific, secure communications.

Passwords panel: A Netscape password protects you if your computer can be physically accessed by other people or remotely accessed through a network. Your password protects your security certificates.

International Character Encodings

Netscape supports the following character encodings in Netscape Navigator for Web, Mail, and News: ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1), Shift-JIS, EUC-JP, JIS (ISO-2022-JP), EUC-KR, GB, Big5, EUC-TW (CNS), and ISO 8859-2 (Latin-2).
Internally, Netscape converts these character encodings to the encodings used in the fonts on your system (which vary from platform to platform). The following is a specific list of the character encodings supported:

Western European: ISO 8859-1, MacRoman (Mac only)
East (or Central) European: ISO 8859-2, MacCE (Mac only)
Japanese: ShiftJIS, EUC JP, ISO-2022-JIS
Korean: EUC KR, ISO-2022-KR
Traditional Chinese: Big 5, EUC TW
Simplified Chinese: GB2312
East (or Central) European: CP 1250 (Windows Latin 2)
Cyrillic: ISO 8859-5, KOI8-R, MacCyrillic (Mac only), CP 1251 (Windows Cyrillic)
Greek: ISO 8859-7, MacGreek (Mac only)
Turkish: ISO 8859-9, MacTurkish (Mac only)

LiveAudio

Plug-in: This plug-in is an asynchronous sound-playing application, capable of playing AIFF, MIDI, WAV, and AU sound formats. The plug-in can be controlled using various views.
Supported Platforms: Win 16, Win 32, Mac 68K, and Mac PPC
System Requirements:

Win 16: (Minimum) 386 Processor with Windows 3.1, and a compatible sound card installed.
Win 32: (Minimum) 386 Processor with Windows 95 or Windows NT, and a compatible sound card installed.
Macintosh (68K): (Minimum) Macintosh 68030, with System 7.1, QuickTime 2.1 (with Musical Instrument Plug-in), and Sound Manager 3.1.
Macintosh (PPC): (Minimum) Macintosh with a PPC 601 (66MHz), System 7.1.2, QuickTime 2.1 (with Musical Instrument Plug-in), and Sound Manager 3.1.

LiveVideo

Plug-in: This plug-in will play AVI movies. AVI is a common video format on Windows.
Supported Platforms: Win 16, Win 32
System Requirements:

Win 16: (Minimum) 386 Processor with Windows 3.1, and a compatible sound card installed. Will require "Video for Windows."
Win 32: (Minimum) 386 Processor with Windows 95 or Windows NT, and a compatible sound card installed.

QuickTime

Plug-in: This plug-in automatically plays QuickTime movies (.mov files) including movies with text, MIDI, and other kinds of data. A page developer can use HTML commands to automatically play a movie for you or to present a controller giving you the ability to play, stop, fast-forward, and rewind movies.
Supported Platforms: Win 16, Win 32, Mac 68K, and Mac PPC
System Requirements:

PC (Win 16 or Win 32): Windows 95, NT, or 3.1, compatible sound card, and QuickTime 2.1.1 for Windows.
Macintosh (68K or PPC): Macintosh with System 7.0 or later, QuickTime 2.1, and Sound Manager 3.2.

CoolTalk

Helper Application: This helper application is a real-time audio and data collaboration tool specifically designed for the Internet. CoolTalk provides full-duplex audio conferencing, allowing both users to speak and be heard simultaneously. Unlike audio-only Internet products, CoolTalk includes a Chat Tool and Shared Whiteboard for textual and graphical data conferencing.
IS411 Server: An interactive version of the IS411 server is available at live.netscape.com. The IS411 server may be used to interactively search for and connect to other registered CoolTalk users.
Supported Platforms: Win 32, Unix (hpux, irix, osf1, sol23, sol24, sun4)
System Requirements:

Win 32:

UNIX: (Note that all UNIX configurations require a minimum of 24 MB of RAM and a microphone for voice input.)

CONFIGURATION AND MIGRATION

Installing under Windows NT 4.0: If you run the installer and nothing happens, try restarting NT and running the installer again.
Quicktime Plug-In:

You must install Quicktime for Windows first, before viewing any Quicktime Movies in Netscape Navigator.
You can download Quicktime for Windows from Apple's site at: http://quicktime.apple.com/qt/sw/sw.html
For more information on Quicktime, check the README.TXT.

16 bit Windows 3.x Users: Both CoolTalk and the LiveVideo plugin require Video for Windows to run. You can download Video for Windows from ftp://ftp.netscape.com/navigator/3.0/windows/wv1160.exe.
Netscape is not showing the most recent version of web pages:

If you have old data in your disk cache, you may still see the problem where Netscape Navigator is not showing you the most recent version of the web pages because of daylight savings time conflicts. To remedy this problem, clear your disk cache the first time you run the Navigator.
If you have cleared your disk cache, and are still seeing this problem, go to Help|How to Give Feedback and tell us about the problem.

KNOWN PROBLEMS

CoolTalk:

If you had previously installed the CoolTalk Watchdog, you need to uninstall it by un-installing Netscape Navigator, and then reboot your machine before installing the latest version of the Navigator. In WindowsNT and Windows3.x, you can also do that by removing the Cooltalk Watchdog Icon from the Startup Program Group, and then restart Windows before installing Netscape Navigator 3.0.
In Windows95, you can right mouse click on the Cooltalk Watchdog Icon and exit before installing Netscape Navigator 3.0. You will find the Cooltalk Watchdog Icon (if turned on) in the right corner of the Win95 Task Bar.
During installation of CoolTalk, the command line argument for the Watchdog is incorrect. It should read as follows:

wdog.exe /v "path to CoolTalk executable"\cooltalk.exe

If your connection to the Internet is behind a firewall, you may have problems connecting to other CoolTalk users outside your firewall. See your system administrator for details.

Live3D:

You may get an error dialog box mentioning that Netscape cannot decode x-gzip files when the VRML worlds are loaded with Live3D. You should ignore this error dialog and click OK.
You may experience a GPF when quitting the Navigator after having viewed certain VRML worlds with the Live3D plugin.

Navigator Problems:

Uuencoded documents will be converted to base64 encoding. You won't be able to send properly uuencoded MIME messages.
After setting some preferences in Mail (or News), you need to close the Mail (or News) Window and open it again for things to take effect.
When you use the right mouse button to view a single GIF image (in 256 color mode), you might experience a "flash" when the custom colormap is installed. The is also true for any page with only one GIF image and no text.
If you are running in 256 color mode and have a Windows background (wallpaper) image present, minimizing then restoring Netscape, might cause images and the Netscape logo to appear in strange colors. Workarounds: 1) Open a new Netscape window (then close it if you wish). 2) Remove the Windows background image.
If Netscape is crashing in the video driver, ensure that you are using the latest drivers for your Video card. You can obtain the latest drivers on-line or by contacting your Video Card's manufacturer.
The Up/Down direction box in the Find dialog in Mail & News is not implemented yet.
You will not receive a warning dialog when sending a message when your disk is out of space. An empty message will be sent to the recipient(s).
LiveAudio & LiveVideo Plugins may not get launched correctly when they are received as Mail Attachments. When received, you can save the attached plugin as a file - (just click the right mouse button, and choose Save Link As). Then drag the file you saved to the Browser Window.
Navigator does not hang when submitting forms using the POST method. This may have occured with previous versions of Navigator with users that had a slower connection and/or connections to a heavily loaded server.
Cannot open Navigator easily? If in the previous session you entered upper case letters in the Nickname field of Address Book | Item |Add User (or Add List), you will get an error message a few times. Just keep clicking the OK button until Netscape comes up, and go back and rename the nickname to be lower case.
Deleting Certificates: When deleting certificates or CA's, it is a good idea to exit and restart the Navigator to make certain that the change took effect.
In Windows 95, if installing 3.0 over 2.02 without deinstalling 2.02, you may get an error message that the older URL.DLL will be repaired when you restart Windows. This is okay so continue with the installation.

Java Bugs:

If you can't start Java applets, make sure Java is turned on in Options|Network|Languages.
The APPLET tag must have WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes.
Win 32bit build for NT & 95: Insets for layout manager is wrong for adding and removing menubar.
There is a new implementation of AWT. This new implementation propagates more user events to more types of components than the JDK AWT. This can cause some programs to misbehave if they are written incorrectly.
Mouse-up events are not implemented if the pointer leaves the applet window.
The Dialog class is not yet implemented.
Java requires at least a 256 color video driver. If you want to use the Navigator with less than 256 colors, Java must be disabled.
The Java Console window has a limit to the amount of text it can display. Once the window fills up, it must be cleared before new text will appear.
In order for a Date object to display the time-zone (ie. PST) the TZ environment variable must be set (for both NT and Win95).

JavaScript Bugs:

Placing an onBlur or onFocus event handler in a tag has no effect.
Returning false in an onClick event handler for a reset button has no effect.
Date objects convert in string context to numeric literals spelling the milliseconds since 1970, instead of date strings such as "Thu Aug 01 14:57:54 PDT 1996".
Pages that call document.write to generate HTML must use HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes on their IMG and EMBED tags, to avoid crashing when the HTML layout delayed by the unsized images finishes.
Documents that are partly source HTML loaded from a server, and partly generated by JavaScript, can be printed, saved, or viewed, but the generated HTML will not appear on the printout, in the saved file, or in the View window.
Calling document.open("text/plain") crashes the browser.
Nested tables mixed with script tags that call document.write() can produce incorrectly formatted output, possibly including pieces of the script tags.

New document.write() behavior: A document.write() call from an event handler no longer keeps JavaScript variables and objects functioning in a page. This could be a security problem. Instead, use a separate window, or do a large write, or use frames.

LiveConnect Bugs:

Java "long" values can't be passed to or from javascript
JavaScript calls to overloaded Java methods may not be resolved correctly.
There is no access to multidimensional Java arrays from JavaScript.
Network activity in Java code called from JavaScript will throw an exception.
JavaScript can't call methods which have non-system classes as arguments (i.e. applet-specific classes). The workaround is to declare those arguments as java.lang.Object (or some other ancestor system class) and then cast them to the appropriate class inside the method.
If JavaScript code tries to access an applet before the applet has finished loading, that applet will be inaccessible from JavaScript even when the applet has finished loading. The error message will say something like "document.applets[0] has no properties." You can wait for all applets to finish loading by waiting for the onLoad handler on the BODY tag to be called.

Putting percent signs (%) into URLs: Netscape now assumes URL encoding on mailto: URLs and other types of URLs. If you want to put a percent sign (%) into a URL, you need to represent it as its hex code. Substitute "%25" for the percent sign. For example,

<A HREF="mailto:user%25uucp-host@somewhere.com">mail</A> to send mail to: user%uucp-host@somewhere.com

Broken CGI scripts: HTML character entities are being evaluated in URLs. For example,

http://sample-cgi/program.pl?topic=man&section=all

is turned into