December 10, 2002
Netscape 7.01 Released
Netscape/AOL released Netscape 7.01 (Mac/OS X/Win) today. Based upon Mozilla build 1.0.2, this release finally incorporates Mozilla's popular pop-up suppression and provides better stability. The former is something you'd most likely want to turn on, as the default Netscape/AOL home page generated three (count 'em) pop-ups for me on launch. ;)
Netscape is claiming 12 million downloads of NS 7, if this trend is continued with 7.01 it may soon be worth rethinking your pop-up usage for critical content. I've been using Chimera Navigator as my primary browser for a while now, and its pop-up suppression has exposed several examples of usability issues we can expect users of such browsers to encounter on sites that assume an active pop-up functionality.
NS 7.01 ships with Flash 6.0r47 and Viewpoint Media Player (Metastream 3r4).
The Win version appears to scope out plug-ins installed elsewhere on the system and copy them for use in 7.01, however, I noticed that this left me with both the bundled Flash 6.0r47 and the 6.0r65 GMC version I've been testing.
See the release notes What's New section for more details.
For enquiring minds:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20021120 Netscape/7.01
Netscape 7.01 doesn't actually block all auto pop-ups; there's a prepopulated list of exempted sites which users may add to. Some of the favored sites are, oddly enough, aol.com and other AOL/Time-Warner properties, bankofamerica.com, broadcast.yahoo.com, and walmart.com, all of which reportedly use pop-ups for non-advertizing purposes.
Two other pop-up blocking browsers are Opera and iCab. Neither of these browsers have made much headway in the states but are reportedly better represented in Europe.
Earthlink is currently running an amusing campaign where a surfer fights a losing battle against a screen full of pop-up ads. Their TotalAccess package features a pop-up blocker add-on for Win IE 5.01 and higher.
The tech used is also available to non-Earthlink subscribers at GuardWall.com.
Posted by: Lewis Francis at December 16, 2002 12:03 AMListed below are links to weblogs that reference 'Netscape 7.01 Released' from Information Gift.
