Netscape beta 0.93 for Windows

You are using Netscape version 0.93 beta for Windows. We have tested without problems under the following Winsocks (TCP/IP stacks):

• Trumpet Winsock (v1.0)
• FTP Software's PC/TCP
• NetManage
• Microsoft WFW (Wolverine)
• Microsoft NT
• The PC-NFS Winsock seems to have major problems with Asynchronous DNS lookups, which we rely upon to do multiple connections. There is a patch for Sun's winsock at ftp://ftp.york.ac.uk/pub/pc-nfs/Patches ... but we haven't fully tested it yet. If you run under another winsock, please report to us how it works. We have also noticed that FTP's winsock sometimes gives a General Protection Fault when asked to lookup a invalid host while on a dial-up connection.

  If you think your winsock is not handling Async DNS correctly, try setting the Async option in the Netscape INI file to "no,"

  	[Network]
  	Use Async DNS=no
  

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

  	[Network]
  	Max Connections=1
  

  which will prevent problems when not using Async DNS but will also result in much slower performance. If you discover that your winsock implementation has problems with Async DNS please send us complete configuration information so that we may work with the winsock vendor to fix the problem.

The following Release Notes cover all of the known problems with this release and also answer some frequently asked questions.

Release Notes

What's New

The following fixes / enhancements have been made since the net release of Beta 0.92:

• Security has now been turned on
• Fixed some more printing bugs
• Fixed DNS failure problems introduced in 0.92
• Transparent GIFs supported in printing
• Fixed a number of bugs with updating the Bookmarks window
• Added drag-and-drop into Netscape windows (you can drag a file from the File Manager into a Netscape window and Netscape will use it).

The following fixes / enhancements have been made since the net release of Beta 0.91:

• Scroll to internal anchors rather than reload from cache
• Animate icon for shift-click operations
• Supply default filename for unknown type file downloads
• Changed history accelerators to Alt+arrows to be a better behaved Windows program
• Fixed extensions when writing temp file for external viewers
• Fixed newsrc browse button so results are actually used
• Standardized file name selection code
• Fixed telnet to non-standard ports
• Added TN3270 support
• Changed name of global history file (mosaic.htm -> netscape.hst)
• Open location / passwd prompt boxes now give focus automatically
• Fixed GPF when accidentally loading binary files into viewing window
• Fixed a bunch of printing / print preview GPFs
• Cleaned up networking code
• Fixed orphan icon in upper-lefthand corner
• Added align=center to P and Hx tags

The following fixes / enhancements have been made since the net release of Beta 0.9:

• Printing has been implemented.
• The disk cache has been turned on (see the installation section about where the disk cache goes).
• True color support for graphics
• The "disappearing forms" problem has been fixed
• The module name has been changed to "netscape" everywhere.
• Fixed GPF when using the Find command

Installation

By default, Netscape expects to live in the directory c:\netscape, the easiest way to install Netscape is to run the sel-extracting archive in a temporary directory and run the setup program.

If you place Netscape in a directory other than c:\netscape you should update the following fields in your INI file:

          [History]
          History File=c:\netscape\netscape.hst

          [Bookmark List]
          File Location=c:\netscape\bookmark.htm

	  [Cache]
	  Cache Dir=c:\netscape\cache

If Netscape cannot write these files (for example, if the directory doesn't exist) Netscape will still run. However global history and bookmarks will not be saved between sessions.

You will also need to create the directory specified by the "Cache Dir" option. If that directory does not exist, Netscape will not be able to do disk caching. It is best to have a directory dedicated to disk caching with nothing else. Netscape periodically house-cleans the disk cache directory and files it doesn't know about (that start with the letter "m") will get blown away since it will think they are orphaned disk cache files.

The setup program will update your INI and make sure the cache directory exists.

Initialization File

The zip file for Netscape contains the initialization file netscape.ini, which has entries for all of the values you can customize for Netscape. Netscape will look in win.ini in the

	[Netscape]
	ini=

section for the location of the INI file. If this does not exist, Netscape will look in the directory where it was run for the INI file. IMPORTANT: the location of the INI files is different from what it was in Beta 0.9.

Importing Hotlists as Bookmarks

Netscape has an import command on the Bookmarks window that will read any HTML file containing links and convert those links into bookmarks. If you would like to import your NCSA Hotlist into Netscape, you can use the Winh2htm (Windows hotlist to html) utility to convert your hotlist to HTML.

Helper Applications

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

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

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


MPEG:
-----
ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/micro/msdos/win3/desktop/mpegv11d.zip
ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/micro/msdos/win3/desktop/mpegw32g.zip


Video for Windows (AVI)
-----------------------
ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/micro/msdos/win3/desktop/avipro2.exe


Audio
-----
ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/micro/msdos/win3/sounds/wham131.zip

Printing

The current beta of Netscape supports printing. If you experience problems please let us know.

Dec Alpha problems

We have received reports that Netscape does not work with NT 3.5 on Dec Alpha machines. We are looking into this problem.

32-Bit Version

We are not shipping a 32-bit version yet. There are a few problems left with Windows95 that we want to fix before releasing a 32-bit Mozilla onto the net.

Forms stop displaying

We think that this Beta solves the problems where form elements would sometimes stop displaying. If you still see this problem please let us know.

Sending in Feedback

Thank you for testing Netscape Beta 0.93 (Windows version). If you have any problems, comments, questions, or bug reports, please use the feedback form.