If you are using Netscape Communicator Professional Edition (which includes Netscape Calendar, IBM Host On-Demand, and AutoAdmin) please read the information contained in these notes. In addition, you can click here to view the Release Notes specifically for Professional Edition.

• What's new
• Known issues
• Developer information
• International information
• Helper applications information

Additional information is available:

• From the Help menu, choose Help Contents
• Technical Notes

General and Setup

• 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.
• This version of Communicator does not support Netcaster.
• Plug-ins installed in previous versions of Navigator are not automatically transferred to Communicator. Re-install these plug-ins.
• The browse button on file forms does not work.
• Pages containing layers cannot be printed.

Composer

• Composer does not resolve links properly if escape characters are contained in the URL.
• Two-page Composer windows might cause your system to hang.
• You might experience a system halt if you use the Alt keyboard shortcuts to or from an open Composer window. Use the mouse to move between windows.
• Do not use more than four applets in a document.

Messenger and Collabra

• You need a certificate of your own (in addition to the recipient's certificate) prior to sending any encrypted mail to the recipient.
• The HTML preferences set in the address book may be overwritten by the preference set in the HTML Domains dialog.
• 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 new messages causes Communicator to try to go online.
• 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.
• Shortcut keys might not bring up the correct dialog or perform the correct action for Windows NT 3.51.
• In the Mail and Discussions Preferences, Identity section, you may need to include your host name, such as johndoe@hostname. Additionally you may need to include your domain name, as in johndoe@company.com. This varies from site to site.

Messenger

• When you send secure mail, you are prompted for your password twice.  If

you cancel the second time, you have to restart Communicator.
• 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.
• If you encounter a general protection fault in msvcrt.dll when sending a message, exit Communicator.  This is caused by a .tmp file Windows limitation. See your system administrator or equivalent about removing these .tmp files.  Afterwards, you can send messages from Communicator.
• The Empty Trash Folder menu item is disabled from the Message List window. Empty the Trash folder from the Message Center.
• When you open a saved draft message, the names in the Reply to and Follow up fields are not listed.
• After you get new messages, the message you had selected before downloading stays current. To get to the first new (unread) message, click Next on the toolbar.

Mail with IMAP Servers

• Your system may halt when you search for messages using the status criteria is replied, is forwarded, or is read.
• If you select the IMAP icon and try to use the Search Message command, the Search button does not work. Select the local mail server icon to search local mail folders.
• 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-byte characters, the names are unreadable. Once created, these folders cannot be deleted.
• Filing a message from a discussion group in an online folder results in an empty dialog. File discussion group  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.
• 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.
• MIME HTML messages (mail with embedded images) do not display properly when read with IMAP.
 
Collabra
 
• The searching discussion messages command is case-sensitive.
• Categories containing new messages are not displayed in bold text.
• Composing a message for a discussion group with the New Message menu item (and not using New Message 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 New Message 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.
 
Windows 16-bit Issues
 
• Your system might halt when adding a secure news or discussions server that has an incorrect certificate.
• 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.
• 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 discussion groups to display.

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 the user is not available but does not prompt you to leave voice mail.
• Voice mail must always be sent in HTML-only format.
• A voice mail recipient using an IMAP server receives the following error message:
file not found or unknown format
• 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 work 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.
• 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 palette problems with plug-ins and Communicator. Minimize and restore the Communicator window. Also, running in 16-bit high-color mode solves the problem.

SmartUpdate

• If a SmartUpdate download of an item occurs while that item is open or in use on your system, you need to restart your system for the update to take place.

Cosmo Player

• During loading of CosmoPlayer within Communicator 4.0, there is a Direct Draw Initialization error with some older graphics display drivers on Windows NT 4.0. Click OK in the dialog boxes to continue.
• On Windows 3.1, you may experience a system halt when leaving or exiting.
• Anchor descriptions now appear in Communicator/Navigator's status area instead of over an object.
• When in POINT mode, TouchSensors are inactive and clicking on anchors does not work.
• Using the right mouse button,  no longer allows you to spin the world. (WebFX/Live3D users: you can use EXAMINE mode and the left mouse button to achieve similar functionality.)

Java

• JSObject.getWindow requires an applet as an argument.
• toLocaleString()method in Date Class throws security exceptions.
• Classes loaded from CLASSPATH are no longer privileged.
• 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.
• Although the targets UniversalFileRead and UniversalFileWrite are fully implemented for the signed classes and the netscape.security. Target objects, the parameter targets FileRead and FileWrite, used for individual file access grants, are not supported.

JavaScript

• New Behavior in Communicator:
• Multi-byte character-set encodings (such as Shift-JIS) can be passed through JavaScript either as string literals or with LiveConnect to and from Java. Manipulation within JavaScript is dangerous since built-in methods do not recognize multi-byte encodings.
• In a frame, history.back, history.forward, and history.go(n) manipulate the frame's local history, not the history of the entire Navigator window that the Back button manipulates.
• In addition to loading system classes, JavaScript can now load Java classes located at the same URL as the page.
• LiveConnect
• When JavaScript code called from Java encounters an error, the error may be reported  to Java in future calls to JavaScript.
• Calls from JavaScript to plug-ins and back to JavaScript can sometimes deadlock.
• The ARCHIVE attribute of a script tag does not propagate to the Java class loader.
• JavaScript and Java don't share class loaders, so passing Java objects as arguments from JavaScript to Java may fail.
• Regular expressions
• When invoked with the case-insensitive option, String.replace() incorrectly changes the return string to lower case.
• When RegExp.exec() is invoked more than once, the index property of the resulting array is incorrect.
• In nested frames the unload event is sent without alerts or confirmation dialogs.
• Plain text written using document.write() sometimes changes to HTML text  when reloading or resizing.
• Using window.alert inside onBlur handlers can cause infinite loops.
• When focus is given from a form field to the top level window then back to the form element, the form's onFocus handler does not always get called.
• The image onAbort event handler does not work correctly in frames.
• document.write does not work inside JavaScript entities followed by {....}.
• The output of dates incorrectly returns the date in milliseconds when the date is concatenated with a string.
• Signed scripts do not work.
• The onMouseOut and onMouseOver handlers do not work.

Layering and absolute positioning

• Layer stacking order is not preserved across 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 target 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. The back/forward buttons do not work with layers.
• It is not possible to use #URLs (named anchors) as the value for a LAYER's SRC attribute.  Also, links to named anchors from a link within a layer may not work properly.
• 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 differently-named variables or use the var keyword to declare such variables before they are used to eliminate the conflict.
• Changing the contents of a layer (calling the load method, setting the src property, calling document.open/write/close) has certain restrictions:
• They cannot be done while the main document is still loading.
• Only one layer can be changed at a given time. Changes to multiple layers must be done serially. You can use the onLoad event handler for layers to achieve the required serialization.
• The Find in Page command does not work in layers.

Style Sheets

• The use of negative margins to overlap text can cause very unpredictable results and is not recommended.
• Use CSS positioning or layers to overlap text.
• Negative margin values are only allowed for margin-top and margin-bottom.
• Do not use pixel units. Because of variances of fonts among operating systems (PC, MAC and UNIX) most fonts will not have the exact same pixel dimensions.  The use of relative units, epecially EMs which are based on the current size of the font, regardless of which font actually gets selected, is highly recommended.
• Assigning styles to the <LI> tag only effect the bullet not the text as it should.  To work around the problem enclose the text with a <SPAN> tag or assign the style to the <UL> or <OL> tag.
• Sizing images using style sheets is disabled.
• Following their original web design, tables do not inherit styles from the surrounding text or style sheet.
• You cannot assign most styles to the <TABLE> or <TR> elements. Use the <TD> element instead.  Exceptions are: background image and color on the <TABLE> tag which work as expected. For other styles, results may vary depending on the complexity of the table and their use is not recommended.
• Small-caps and obliqe font styles are not supported
• Postioning of empty tag elements (eg images) is not supported
• Dotted and dashed border styles are not supported.
• Border colors and styles can only be applied to all four sides at once via the border-color and border-style properties. They cannot be set on a per side basis.
• The vertical-align property only applies to replaced elements and does not support percentage units, sub, or super.
• The background property inherits into text elements.  Apply a "background-color : transparent" if you do no want inheritance.
• Unsupported CSS attributes include:
• word-spacing and letter-spacing
• first-line and first-letter styles
• list-style-image and list-style-position
• white-space: no-wrap
• font-variant  (see small-caps above)
• !important
• background-attachment and background-position
In order to make pixel units print sensibly when going to high resolution printers, pixel units are scaled to a virtual display resolution of  120dpi.  What this means is that when going to a 300dpi printer, fonts that are specified as being 12px high will be output as 30px or 7.2pts which is how they would appear on a screen with a 120dpi resolution.  This is consistant with how pixel units specified via HTML tags (for example <table width=100>) are scaled.  This scaling will not cause fonts to have jagged edges since the font will be printed at the full 300dpi resolution at 7.2pts.  All other related pixel units (line-height, margins, etc.) are scaled as well.

SmartUpdate

• For developer-related issues regarding SmartUpdate and JAR files, see the release notes for the JAR Packager, which are at: http://developer.netscape.com/software/signedobj/relnotes.html

Known Issues

• UTF-8 pages displayed under US Windows 95 may not work properly when the Windows 95 system was installed using the Custom Install option. Re-install Windows 95 using the Typical install option to eliminate the problem.
• Copying and pasting CJK characters in a UTF-8 form has a limitation and may not work well if the copy source itself is in UTF-8.
• If there is a mismatch between the HTTP server character set and the document's own Meta Charset, the document's Charset Tag may predominate.
• On Windows NT, Cyrillic/Greek/Turkish/Central European characters may not display correctly in TextArea and Text Input for an HTML FORM.
• Using the View Page Info command may cause the original page to display incorrectly when the Page Info window is closed. Reload the page to restore the correct display.
• When multiple frames are created by JavaScript, the second or later pages may be assigned the incorrect character set. For example, a search result page may be generated this way. In such a case, resize the window or reload the frame to restore the correct display. Page designers can avoid this problem by initially loading multiple frames using conventional HTML rather than with JavaScript.
• Communicator supports only one encoding for multiple layers.
• HTML Composer cannot save documents in ISO-2022-JP (Japanese) or ISO-2022-KR (Korean).
• Under Chinese/Japanese/Korean encodings, if there are more than one ASCII spaces in HTML mail and documents, all but the last one will be converted to a full-width space in that particular encoding.  When you view such a mail message or documents under the Western encoding, it will be displayed as unintelligible strings in ASCII.  A typical case of this would be reply/quoting an English mail message under a Japanese encoding. For composing HTML mail and documents which contain only ASCII (for example, English only), use one of the following methods:
• Use the Western encoding to compose such mail or documents
• If an Asian encoding is used, insert only one space between sentences and avoid using tabs.
• An Address Book/Mail Header name resolution may insert an equivalent of ASCII  backslash "\" in the display of certain Japanese and Chinese characters. This is a cosmetic problem likely to occur only with Shift_JIS (Japanese) and Big5 (Taiwan) encodings. Email address resolution should work all right and messages can be sent.
• There may be a slight imperfection in the Address Book resolution when there are multi-byte (C/J/K) language entries.