Ever recommended some cool new Web browser to all your friends, only to figure out later that, under its shiny exterior, it’s really a nightmare of bugs and flaws?
It seems to me that the developers of Netscape 6 are too caught up in make it look flashy, when they should be concentrating on improved functionality. I don’t mind the look of NS 4.7x. Many of the ’’improvements’’ in NS 6, including ’’My Sidebar’’ and the needlessly two-tiered status bar at the bottom of the screen reduce the amount of space available to display webpages. I don’t consider these improvements. The tool and status bars have been mucked up with a bunch of options (e.g., shopping) that I have no interest in. It would be nice if one could easily remove these annoying buttons and go back to a single-tiered status bar. Rather than wasting time jazzing up the interface, how about reinstating the drag and drop bookmark creation, making bookmarks and bookmark folders self-alphabetizing, and generally improving the bookmark editing process. While I like the new security feature that allows you to refuse cookies from specific websites, it was silly not to allow you to hand-enter names to the reject list.Last version of NS6 I downloaded, you had to visit the site in order to add it to the refusal list. One ’’improvement’’ from NS 4.75 that I hope is not and never will be part of NS6 (I dumped NS6 before I could check this) is so-called ’’smart downloading, ’’ which forces you to accept adds as you download that can only be dismissed through the Windows task manager. This annoying feature drove me back to NS 4.72 from 4.75. In sum, while I can understand the desire of developers to experiment and produce ’’gee whiz’’ products, the ultimate arbiter of what is an improvement is the end user. This end user wants improved functionality, no space age looks.