Welcome to Netscape Communicator Preview Release 3

NETSCAPE COMMUNICATOR FOR WINDOWS
Preview Release 3

As with all pre-release or beta versions of software, it is recommended that you only use the software for evaluation purposes. These are the most current release notes. You can access these release notes from the Help menu in Communicator. Please ignore any release notes that might have been previously installed on your system.

If you are using Netscape Communiator Professional Edition, click here to view the Release Notes specifically for Professional Edition.

*** Expires June 15th, 1997 ***

These release notes cover:

What's new in Preview Release 3
Features not yet implemented
Known issues in this release
International information
How to use Messenger and Collabra

Unknown problems and bugs -- please tell us about bugs you find.

Additional information is available:

From the Help menu, choose Help Contents
From the Help menu, choose Frequently Asked Questions
Technical Notes

WHAT'S NEW IN THIS RELEASE?

General and Setup

Enhanced visual appearance and user interface
Task bar that enables easy access to Communicator components
Context-sensitive NetHelp
Cross-platform support
New animation indicating network activity
Multiple user profiles

Navigator

IIOP distributed objects
If a system halt related to the Kernel32.dll occurs, update the kernel. You can obtain the update from http://www.microsoft.com/kb/articles/q148/3/36.htm. This may correct the problem.
Symantec JIT
Dynamic font support (including bitstream font displayer)
New security information manager

Enhanced kiosk mode
Improved OLE support
Java

Communicator now supports Java and LiveConnect on all platforms.
Netscape supports the latest JDK 1.1 functionality with the exception of the AWT which remains compatible with JDK 1.0.2 but has additional performance improvements.
Capabilities-based Java/JavaScript security
Support for IIOP distributed objects
Internet Foundation Classes 1.1
A Java LDAP API
Significant run-time performance improvements
Support for the OBJECT tag
Unicode support on all platforms
Support for JAR files
Shift-Reload causes applets to be reloaded and restarted
Multicast socket support
AWT callbacks are now handled on each applet's thread
Additional Java console commands (type '?' in the console for information)
Extended access for trusted Java applets
Additional JavaScript enhancements

Layering and absolute positioning

Style Sheets Support

Improved support for the W3C working draft standard "Positioning HTML Elements with Cascading Style Sheets". Specifically, the CLIP, OVERFLOW and HEIGHT properties are now implemented and percentage values can be specified where appropriate.

HTML Layers

The SRC attribute has been added to the layer tag for encapsulating an arbitrary HTML URL inside a layer.
The HEIGHT attribute was added to the <LAYER> tag.
The WIDTH, HEIGHT and CLIP attributes of the <LAYER> tag now accept percentage values.
The VISIBILITY attribute accepts all three legal values, including SHOW for both <LAYER> and <ILAYER>.
PAGEX and PAGEY attributes have been added for page-relative positioning of <LAYER> and <ILAYER>.
The <NOLAYER> tag has been added to permit authors to incorporate content for older browsers that are not layer-capable.

Dynamic Layers

Every layer in JavaScript now has a DOCUMENT property that scopes all the reflected HTML objects inside the layer. Similarly, JavaScript code exists inside a <LAYER> tag will be scoped to the containing layer rather than the window. THIS CHANGE MAY BE INCOMPATIBLE WITH SCRIPTS DESIGNED TO WORK WITH COMMUNICATOR PR2.
It is possible to create new layers after the document has loaded by using JavaScript's new layer constructor method.
The document.write method can be used to dynamically generate the contents of a specified layer.
The <LAYER> tag accepts onLoad, onMouseover, onMouseout, onFocusand onBlur JavaScript event handlers.
More sophisticated event handling can take place through the setCapture, releaseCapture event mechanism
All document objects now have WIDTH and HEIGHT properties, which reflect the width and height of the content of the (layer's) document and which can be used to set the scrolling limits of the window.
HTML that can be used to set the SRC attribute (or SRCproperty) can now contain <HEAD> and <BODY> tags.
There are now pageX and pageY properties that provide page-relative positioning information.
The LOAD method has been added to the layer object. It can be used to simultaneously set a layer's WIDTH and SRC.
The offset method for layers has been renamed to moveBy, so as to be more consistent with the similar method on Window objects.

Composer

Enhanced Composer plug-ins (now includes event model)
Publishing enhancements for easy one-button publishing
Table editing enhancements
Keyboard navigation

WYSIWYG HTML editing
Integrated with Messenger and Collabra
Improved line and character spacing behavior
Improved tool bars
Spelling checker

Japanese inline input
Image resize
Image import

Messenger

Encrypted/Signed Messages (S/MIME)
Synchronized offline IMAP4
End-user management of account (vacation and password changes)
Intelligent sending of HTML, plain text, or multi-part alternative
IMAP4 for server-based management of mail
Rules and filters for IMAP server folders
HTML compose with the ability to drag and drop images within a message (MIME HTML)
Quoted text with HTML
Intelligent sending of HTML or plain text based on address book entries

Collabra

Offline reading of discussion groups
End-user management of discussion groups
Indexed searching of messages in discussion group
Virtual Discussion groups (profiled collections of messages)
End-user management of discussion groups on Collabra Server 3.0. Ability to create:

groups
categories
access control lists

Display to categories in Message List window with Collabra Server 3.0
HTML compose with the ability to drag and drop images within a message (MIME HTML)
Quoted text with HTML
Ability to read and post to Internet newsgroups

Conference

Voice Mail for Windows 32-bit platforms
Attendant mode allows the main interface to be hidden and still listen for incoming calls. An icon appears in the Task bar tray to recall the main interface
Drop down list box tracks all direct dialed calls during a session
New DLS server and Phonebook services hosted by Four11.com http://www.four11.com/conference
New high quality elemedia SX8300P speech codec
New ultra low bit rate RT24/29 codec from Voxware
Additional Help implemented
Interface improvements and graphics
Call logging and address book features for Windows 16-bit platforms
Setup wizard helps set up microphone gain and silence sensor level
Sample business card images included

Live 3D

Full EAI support
ASCII text and font style support
Content selectable and switchable interfaces
Correct calculation of the fieldOfView
Improved sensor handling and routing
Protos
Full VRML 2.0/1.x support (including Live3D 1.0 extension nodes)
JavaScript supported in script node
Per-vertex colors
Support for 3D sound using Intel's RSX Technology
Support for 256x256 and MPEG textures
Improved lighting and material models
Support for large data sets
Improved Collision with terrain following
Support for MFString URLs
Performance enhancements

FEATURES NOT YET IMPLEMENTED

Windows 16-bit platforms

NetHelp

Conference

Voice Mail for Windows 16-bit platforms
Full frame support for collaborative browsing
Whiteboard inter-operability with Macintosh
G711 a-law and G723 codecss for Windows 16-bit platforms

KNOWN ISSUES IN THIS RELEASE

General and Setup

This release has not been fully optimized for size or performance. 16 MB of RAM or more is recommended.
Users running Windows NT with NTFS file systems might have trouble creating a user profile. A profile is needed before you can use most of the Communicator compents. Have the system administrator modify the registry to give you complete access to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Netscape key.
Plug-ins installed in previous versions of Navigator are not automatically transferred to Communicator. Re-install these plug-ins.
On some intranets, the default Collabra server is a secure Collabra server. The setup wizard does not have any way of specifying the default discussion host as a secure Collabra server.
If you receive the error "dbg "VR_Create Registry:3," remove the older copy of nsreg.dat that was placed on your system during a previous installation.
The browse button on file forms does not work.
NetHelp

The system might occasionally hang on first launch.
The system might halt if you resize the Help window.
The contents tool does not automatically scroll to selected topic.
The Incremental search field in the index does not work.
Context sensitive Help does not fully load unless you close the dialog from which you launched Help.
The Find command does not operate in the topic window unless you click the window first.
The Print command prints the entire topic file, not the current topic.
Functions on local menus and assigned keyboard accelerators that can

Navigator

Resizing the window of a page containing plug-ins, forms, or stylesheets, causes the plug-in, form, or stylesheet to lose its original position or formatting.
The File, Edit Frame menu item is not working correctly.
Some web counters are not displayed correctly in Navigator.
Scrolling in a page containing frames is not working.
All layers in a web page are not printed.

Java

Java is not enabled on Windows 16-bit platforms in this beta. Reloading IIOP applets can leave the server in an undetermined state.
JSObject.getWindow requires an applet as an argument.
toLocaleString()method in Date Class throws security exceptions.
Classes loaded from CLASSPATH are no longer privilaged
FileInputStream object's available method fails
JDK 1.1 packages missing in this beta include java.math and sun.rmi
The java.security package is unsupported
On Unix, mouse focus is broken for some applets. A workaround is to place the cursor in the location field and tab to the applet.

JavaScript

The View Source and Save commands do not capture HTML output by document.write() on the PC Windows Navigator.
JavaScript does not handle multi-byte character set encodings (such as Shift-JIS).
Unload:

The unload event is not cancellable via 'return false' from within the onUnload event handler..
unload events can be lost when the page is unloaded before the event is sent.
onUnload may run after the page's HTML objects have been discarded, but before the onUnload event handler function has been discarded.
in nested frames the unload event is handled only by the top level window.

Resizing of windows:

can enter a race condition with JavaScript that is currently writing to the window.
in a window containing frames, event handler code for buttons and for the host window is sometimes lost during resize.
plain text written using document.write() sometimes changes to html text on resize.

The onSelect event handler is not working in Win16.
window.focus() and window.blur() do not work.
document.write() does not work when it appears in files included via the SRC= attribute.
JavaScript is turned off by default after installing Communicator on Windows 3.1. Enable JavaScript under Edit/Preferences/Advanced if you have pages that use JavaScript, or if you have pages with style sheets.
The Image onAbort event handler does not work correctly.
In a frame, history.back, history.forward, and history.go(n) manipulate the frame's local history, not the full history of the entire Navigator window that the Back button manipulates..
You must include new when calling Java constructors from JavaScript. For example, var size = new java.awt.Dimension (...)

Layering and absolute positioning

Pages containing layers cannot be printed.
The ALIGN attribute might not be obeyed for applets and plug-ins inside layers.
Capturing layer events (with the captureEvents method) is not implemented yet.
Some layer information is not preserved across window/frame resize. For example, stacking order, layer content if it is generated with document.write. JavaScript timeouts are also lost after a window/frame resize.
Negative values for the Z-INDEX attribute on LAYER and ILAYER tags are not recognized.
Clicking on a link in a SRC layer, where the link has no TARGET attribute, causes the page to be loaded into the top-level window, instead of replacing the layer. It is not possible to target URLs at layers as with frames and the back/forward buttons do not work with layers.
The new WIDTH and HEIGHT properties added to the document object may conflict with user-defined variables of the same name. It is recommended that scripts containing these properties be modified to use differentlly-named

var

Composer

Composer plug-in windows sometimes open behind the Composer window. Bring them to the front with the task bar.
Composer Plug-ins do not work with this release for Prime Windows 16-bit platforms. This problem only occurs if you have manually installed a Composer Plug-in. If a Composer Plug-in is installed, and you open a Composer window, the Composer window will not respond to mouse clicks or keystrokes. Exit Communicator, remove the Composer Plug-in from your Plug-ins folder, and restart Communicator.
The Edit Frame command is not working correctly. The Edit Frame command edits the frame set rather than the selected frame pane.
Trying to use an external HTML editor or image editor does not work in this release.
Composer does not resolve links properly if escape characters are contained in the URL.
The Tools, Language menu item is not available in the plain text mail composer. Change the language in Composer. Changes apply to plain text mail as well.

Messenger and Collabra

The font in the subject field might appear smaller than normal.
Opening a draft s saved with a blank recipient field defaults the recipient to draft@netscape.com. Delete this address entry prior to sending the draft.
Opening an encrypted message saved as a draft does not work. Do not save a draft with the encyption option checked in the compose window.
When you set up your certificate, leave the ask for a password option at the defualt setting. If you change the option, you might encounter a system halt when replying to an encrypted message.
In the Security Advisor, the options to ask for a password every time and to ask for a password after a varying number of minutes are not working. Use the option to ask for a password per session.
You need a certificate of your own (in addition to the recipient's certificate) prior to sending any encrypted mail to the recipient.
Composing a message from the web browser or from the address book does not check the encrypted or signed options by default even if it is set in the Security Advisor. Verify the encrypted and signed options from the options tab in the compose window.
No visual indication exists for the offline or online states. Verify the current state by looking at the File menu. It states either Go Offline or Go Online.
In the offline state, choosing the Send toolbar button in the Compose window places the message to the Outbox to send at a later time.
In the offline state, accessing getting new messages causes Communicator to try to go online.
The number shown in the Offline Groups preferences and in the Download dialog as being selected for offline reading may show 0. Choose Select Discussions to view the accurate number of discussion groups selected for download.
A problem exists with reading a mail message containing a web page. Persistent error dialogs appear.
An address book upgraded to Communicator PR3 cannot be used in Communicator PR2 or earlier.

The No Pages to Print error occurs if you have scrolled down to the bottom of a message. Scroll back to the top of the message and print again.
If you get a system halt when invoking the Compose window, rename abook.nab (address book file) located in your Users Profile directory.
Some preference settings are not completely implemented. In such cases, this release uses the settings from Netscape Navigator 3.x.
The Add to Address Book button in the Search Directory dialog does not work. Selected names are not added to the address book. Access the LDAP search feature from within the address book, select the desired name, and choose to compose a message. Copy the address, and then from the address book, add a new user and paste the address in the specified field.
Shortcut keys might not bring up the correct dialog or perform the correct action for Windows NT 3.51.
The default values for the Disk Space tab in Mail and Discussions Preferences are not optimally set if you previously used PR2. If using these options, specify the values you want to use.
The Next Folder and Next Unread Folder commands under the Go menu within the Message window are not working.
In the Mail and Discussions Preferences, Identity section, include a valid user name and domain name in the E-mail field (for example, johndoe@company.com). If you do not include the domain name, a system halt might occur when composing with the HTML Composer.

Messenger

Adding an entry, currently not in the personal address book to a mailing list, results in a dialog asking to add that entry to your personal address book. In this dialog, choosing No is the same as choosing Cancel.
The progress dialog remains at 100% for longer than necessary before continuing to download other messages, especially when using filters for incoming messages. This can be ignored.
Make sure all cards in your address book contain email addresses. If there is not an email address associated with a card in your address book, Communicator might halt.
If you encounter a general protection fault in msvcrt.dll when sending a message, exit Communicator. This is caused by a .tmp file Windows limitations. See your system administrator or equivalent about removing these .tmp files. Afterwards, you can send messages from Communicator.
The Empty trash menu item is disabled from the Message List window. Empty the trash folder from the Message Center.
After you get new messages, the message you had selected before downloading stays current. To get to the first new (unread) message, click Next Unread on the toolbar.
If Communicator has not accessed a mail folder (and built a summary file for it internally), a mail filter using that folder might not correctly filter messages to that folder. The messages appear in your Inbox rather than in the designated folder.

Mail with IMAP Servers

When using Communicator with some IMAP servers, you may wish to specify an IMAP mail directory. Access the Mail & Groups Preferences. Under the Mail Server section, choose More Options. Specify the mail directory in this dialog. Exit and restart Communicator.
When creating IMAP4 folders on a mail server, use only ASCII characters. If folders are named with European accented characters or Chinese/Japanese/Korean double-bye characters, the names are unreadable. Once created, these folders cannot be deleted.
Trying to perform operations with online folders prior to logging in might cause problems. These operations include emptying the online trash folder, renaming online folders, and creating any online folders.
Filing a message from a discussion group in an online folder results in an empty dialog. File newsgroup messages in a local mail folder.
You might get prompted for a POP password when sending a message under IMAP. Enter your POP password and the message is sent.
You can access IMAP4 Servers with this version of Communicator. Synchronization of online and offline mail foldersfunctionality is limited..
If you accessed an IMAP server in Communicator PR1 and have not used PR2, a directory or mail folder named IMAPMailboxes appears after you log in to an IMAP server. Delete the folders in the IMAPMailboxes folder or move them elsewhere.
After switching between IMAP and POP servers, exit and restart the application.
You can specify a directory for your IMAP folders. Set this preference in Mail and Groups preferences under the Mail Server section. Click More options and set the IMAP mail directory.
If you mark all messages Read or Catch up by Date, the next time you get new messages, those messages become marked as unread again. Manually mark each message as Read by selecting each one or clicking the green Unread indicator in the Message List window.
Mail filters are supported on server folders in IMAP mode, but not for local folders.
From the Message Center, the File, Empty Trash Folder menu item is enabled after you select a mail folder in the Message Center. Emptying the Trash empties both your online Trash folder, as well as your local Trash folder (POP server), if one exists.
You might not get a login prompt when you open your inbox. The inbox window appears, the Netscape logo is animated, but you are not prompted for your password. To avoid this problem, do not bring up the Message Center from Collabra, Discussions file menu, but instead use the Message Center from the menu. You can also select another IMAP folder from the folder drop-down list in the Inbox. This causes the login dialog to appear. Log in and switch to the Inbox folder.
MIME HTML messages (mail with embedded images) does not display properly when read with IMAP.

Collabra

Searching discussion messages command is case-sensitive.
Composing a message to a discussion group with the Compose menu item (and not using To: Discussion from within the discussion group) sends the message to the default server. An error message occurs if the discussion group is not on your default server. Compose a message from within the discussion group so the To: Discussions toolbar or menu item is available.
The unread and total counts displayed in the Message List window are per category.

Categories within Discussion Groups on Beta Collabra Server

You can access categories created on Beta Collabra Server 3.0, which supports category creation. The Message List window shows the categories in the upper left pane.
A time delay might occur when marking a large (for example, 10,000 messages) discussion group as read using the Catch Up By Date feature.
The Next Category command under the Go menu within the Message List window is not working.

Windows 16-bit Platforms Specific

Your system might halt when adding a secure news or discussions server that has an incorrect certificate.
The New Groups feature within the Subscribe to Groups dialog is not working.
If you open the Address Book, you might only see a title bar. Click the ^ button in the title bar to maximize the Address Book.
The dialog for saving attachments does not appear if the attachment you are saving exceeds the standard eight character limit.
The list nickname and list name options only show the word list. List Name is the field above the List Nickname field.
With some graphics cards, you might notice a flashing in the address pane in the compose window.
You might be unable to select the address, attachment, or options tab in the compose window. Place your cursor in the Subject field before changing to or from the address, attachment, or options tab.
After creating a new profile and starting Communicator, make sure the default news server in the Mail and Groups preferences dialogs is filled in. If not, a general protection fault upon accessing the Subscribe to Groups dialog occurs..
On slower systems, there might not be appropriate feedback as you access the Subscribe to Groups dialog. If you hear the hard drive being accessed, then Communicator is still active. It may take a few minutes for the list of newsgroups to display.
Signed messages originating from the Windows 3.1x version of Communicator appear with invalid signatures on other platforms.

Conference

Conference needs to be running to receive calls.
The Collaborative Browser does not work with JavaScript pages that require user action and anchors linking different portions of forms.
Frame support during collaborative browsing is limited.
Calling a fictitious user prompts you to leave voice mail.
Calling a valid user that has selected the Do Not Disturb option notifies you they are not available but does not prompt you to leave voice mail.
Placing a call to a user who does not have Conference running does not prompt you to leave voice mail.
Placing a call to a valid user that is running Conference but does not accept or reject your call does not time out or prompt you to leave voice mail.
Netscape Conference does not interoperate with Cool Talk or with the Netscape 411 Server for Cooltalk.
Netscape Conference does not usually run across firewalls unless the firewall is configured to allow UDP data to pass through.
Closing the Conference application may occasionally cause an invalid page fault in the Voxware codec.

Plug-ins

ViewDirector Pro2 plug-in does not work.
QuickTime movies stutter when there is more than one movie on a page.
Plug-ins currently do not redraw correctly after resizing the window.
Plug-ins requesting a URL for a gif or jpeg file crashes Navigator.
Plug-ins from other companies installed in previous versions of Navigator are not automatically transferred to Communicator. Re-install these plug-ins.
You might experience color pallete problems with plug-ins and Communicator. Minimize and restore the Netscape window. Also, running in 16-bit high color mode solves the problem.
AVI or sound files (au,wav,aiff, or mid) that are attached from a local disk drive in a mail message do not play.

INTERNATIONAL INFORMATION

Browser/Display

Browsing or displaying Unicode pages/mail/news (UTF-7, UTF-8, UCS-2) is now supported for many languages. Communicator can use appropriate font glyphs matching the Unicode code points from the user's local fonts. New encoding menu items, UTF-7 and UTF-8 have been added. Though not in the encoding menus, UCS-2 auto detection is supported. (Bi-directional and complex-ligature languages are not supported.)
US Windows 95/NT users can display Chinese, Japanese, and Korean pages/mail/news if appropriate fonts are installed. A native operating system (such as Japanese Windows 95) is not required for display. The input in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, however, does require appropriate native operating system or equivalents. If you use native Windows 95/NT systems such as Japanese Windows 95, you can display other Asian languages, with appropriate fonts.
On Windows 95/NT, it is no longer necessary to make registry modifications to use Unicode fonts. Communicator can now use appropriate native or Unicode fonts automatically.
All Unicode conversions are now based on Unicode Standard 2.0.
NCR (Numeric Character References) and NE (Named Entities) display properly if the character in question is available in the chosen encoding. NCR's are interpreted as Unicode code points in the decimal format. If the corresponding character does not exist in the chosen encoding, then "?" will be displayed.
Many new languages are added in the Accept-Language Preferences Window for convenience. The Accept-Language option is used to indicate the user's preferred language(s) when sending requests to HTTP servers, which in turn can use this information to send back documents matching the user's preferences.
Though no menu item is available for this function, Communicator currently sends out the user's system default character set and UTF-8 as 'minimally' acceptable character sets. Accept-Charset information can be used to improve communication between Communicator and directory servers by providing the servers the information on what character sets Communicator can accept from them.
Japanese automatic code detection has been improved, particularly for EUC.
Korean browsing now features automatic code detection between ISO-2022-KR and EUC-KR.

Composer

The HTML Composer now automatically adds character set information to the edited document in the form of a Meta-Charset attribute within the <HEAD> ... </HEAD> tags. The Composer preserves the existing character encoding when saving a document, but the user can also change it if so desired. (For Japanese, currently, saving into ISO-2022-JP (JIS) is not supported, but this function will be added in future. Saving an original non-Unicode document into a Unicode encoding is not supported in this release.)

Mail

You can compose and send rich-text mail (HTML) in all the languages supported.
Searching and filtering European /Asian languages in the local Mail folders has been improved.
Searching and filtering European /Asian languages are not currently supported for directories in remote servers.
All address book /vCard fields such as First Name, Last Name, Nickname, Company now accept input in European accented-characters and Chinese/Japanese/Korean 2-byte characters.
You can enter European/Asian Nicknames or First Names in the To: mail field, and they will be resolved to real e-mail addresses based on the Address Book entries.
Searching European /Asian languages is also supported in the local Address Book.
Korean mail messages are now transmitted using the 7-bit ISO-2022-KR encoding. News articles are posted using the EUC-KR encoding. Currently, the same message cannot be sent to both the mail and news servers except in the 8-bit EUC-KR. We recommend sending messages separately to the mail and news servers in such a case.
When creating IMAP4 folders on a mail server, use only ASCII characters. If folders are named with European accented characters or Chinese/Japanese/Korean double-bye characters, the names are unreadable. Once created, these folders cannot be deleted.

Java

Windows 95/NT Communicator can display Chinese, Japanese, and Korean strings in Java applets if the appropriate fonts are available on the system. It required an additional registry setting in Navigator 3 to use Unicode fonts, but this is no longer necessary. UNIX currently requires custom resource settings in addition to fonts.
Chinese, Japanese, and Korean input is possible in Java AWT TextArea and TextField windows. Communicator does not provide its own input method, and so the user's system must have native input methods for these languages.
All the JDK 1.1 internationalization classes are incorporated into Communicator.

HOW TO USE MESSENGER AND COLLABRA

Add a Collabra/news server and subscribe to discussion groups - use the Join Discussions from the File menu in the Netscape Message Center folder window. For more information on how to search for and subscribe to discussion groups, choose Help Contents from the Help menu.
New windows:

Folder window: displays the Netscape Message Center, which contains lists of mail folders and discussion groups to which you subscribe
Message List window: displays the contents of a mail folder or discussion group, and provides a collapsible message area in which you can view a selected message
Message window: displays the content of a selected message

Reusable windows - When opening mail folders, discussion groups, and messages, Communicator reuses the Message List or Message window you currently have open, instead of opening a new window
One- or two-pane display in message list window - The Message List window has a collapsible message area, which you can use to view a message you select from the message list
New mail icon - The Inbox icon on the task bar indicates when you have new mail on your server. Opening your Inbox no longer downloads new messages. To receive new messages, click the Get New Messages button on the toolbar.
Mail Notification application - To launch this feature, run Netscape Mail Notification from your Communicator program folder. This notification runs minimized on the Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0 task bar. To set up this mail notification, right mouse click on the mail notification icon in the task bar. You can check to see if you have new mail (without having Communicator loaded) or run mail directly from this icon. This mail notification program remains loaded unless you exit by using the right mouse menu. This feature does not work when your mail is set up for an IMAP4 server.
Reuse Message List and Message Windows - There is an option to reuse the Message List and Message windows or open a new window when another folder, discussion or message is selected. You can set this option from Mail and Discussions Preferences, Mail and Discussions tab. The option is "Reuse thread and message window" and "Reuse message window."
One or Two Pane Display in Thread Window - There is an option to show the message contents from the Message List window (two panes) or to show just the threads (one pane). You can set from Mail and Discussions Preferences, in the Mail & Discussions tab. The option is "show message in thread window by default." You can also switch between one or two panes by clicking on the blue arrow toggle shown in the left side of the window below the end of the thread list.
Next Unread - Next Unread spans across mail folders and discussion groups
Backtrack and Forward - Backtrack is a feature, available from the Go menu, that takes you to the messages that you have just read. Forward, available from the Go menu, takes you to the messages you've backtracked from.
Inbox Icon in the Netscape Task bar - Unlike Netscape Navigator 3.0x, displaying the Mail Inbox or the Netscape Message Center does not automatically get new messages for you. To receive new messages, click Get New Messages on the toolbar or the Message menu.
Filing or Copying Messages - Instead of trying to display both the Message window and a Message List window side by side to drag and drop messages into folders, you can file (move) or copy messages directly from the Message List window or from the Message window. Use the File toolbar button to move messages into folders or use the commands from the Message window. You can also file discussion group messages into folders that you create to capture information you want to refer to later.
"More" feature - You can press the spacebar to read through all your unread messages.
Send Later - You can defer sending of your messages by choosing the Send Later command under the Message menu. Choosing Send Later places your message into the Outbox folder. You can send the outgoing messages by choosing Message | Send in Outbox from the Netscape Message Center or from the Outbox's Message List window when you are online.
Save Drafts - You can save messages that you are in the process of composing. From within the Composition window, click the Save Draft toolbar button. You can continue composing your message and then send it. Or, you can close the Composition window and then go into the Drafts folder and select the draft you saved. Double-click the draft and the Composition window appears for you to modify the message and send it.
Filters - Filter support allow you to organize your incoming messages. Use Mail Filter Rules in the Edit menu to create filters.
Views - You can display five different views in the Thread window. They are: New, Threads with New, Watched, Ignored, and All. Use the Messages command in the View menu to change views to one of these options:

Threads with New

Watched

Ignored

All

New - Only unread messages appear.

Showing More Columns in the Thread Window - Communicator defaults to showing a specified set of columns in the Netscape Message Center and the Netscape Message List window. You can increase or decrease the number of columns shown by clicking on the < or > buttons at the right of the column headings.


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NETSCAPE COMMUNICATOR FOR WINDOWS Preview Release 3

WHAT'S NEW IN THIS RELEASE?

General and Setup

Navigator

Composer

Messenger

Collabra

Conference

Live 3D

FEATURES NOT YET IMPLEMENTED

Windows 16-bit platforms

Conference

KNOWN ISSUES IN THIS RELEASE

General and Setup

Navigator

Java

JavaScript

Layering and absolute positioning

Composer

Messenger and Collabra

Mail with IMAP Servers

Categories within Discussion Groups on Beta Collabra Server

Conference

Plug-ins

INTERNATIONAL INFORMATION

Browser/Display

Composer

Mail

Java

HOW TO USE MESSENGER AND COLLABRA

NETSCAPE COMMUNICATOR FOR WINDOWS
Preview Release 3