Netscape Communicator PR2

Two weeks ago, Netscape released the second preview version (PR2) of its Communicator suite, and there has already been quite a reaction from the media and users.

Communicator (file size 2.97 meg) includes a Web browser, an e-mail client, a newsgroup client, an HTML editor, and a collaborative work tool with shared white board. My first impression is that this is too much functionality packed into one application, and the resulting size and complexity make it clunky and uncommonly buggy. It reminds me, in the worst way, of the recent versions of Microsoft Word. It's now so huge and does so many things that I don't want to use it for anything because I have to drag all the added functions with it.

I know what you're thinking, I'm starting to sound more and more like Andy Rooney. There's nothing more tiresome than a cranky old technology curmudgeon. Nonetheless, I find myself favoring older tools with less functionality over the new "feature rich" ones. For example, I'm writing this column in TeachText (file size a puny 39K), the default text viewer that comes with my Mac, rather than a word processor or an HTML editor because it's faster and it saves as the only output I need, plain text--the ultimate cross-platform format.

Netscape's HTML editor, Composer, is nice, but no better than many other HTML editors, especially not better than BBedit, which has a multifile "find and replace" function that I think is the coolest feature in any HTML editor I've seen.

In the same vein, I prefer using Eudora Pro (file size 732K) as my e-mail client over Netscape's Messenger, even though Messenger lets you create and view HTML e-mail and Eudora doesn't. Eudora is small and uncomplicated, but it does offer one really essential feature that Messenger doesn't--mail filters that let me screen out all the mail I get from listservs. HTML in e-mail can be cool, but you've got to remember who can read it and who can't. Messenger will help you remember. But hey, any e-mail client will let you attach an HTML file, so what's the big deal about HTML email?

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of Netscape and I want it to remain a major player in the software industry, but I worry that it's beginning to make the same mistakes Microsoft did by letting MS Word grow out of control. Making a good little program bigger doesn't always make it better.

I'm glad the version of Navigator can handle all the new HTML things, like Cascading Style Sheets. I'm also pleased that it comes with lots of preloaded plug-ins for audio, VRML, and other things. But Netscape Navigator was once a nimble little mammal, and as a component of Communicator, it's been inextricably imprisoned inside a lumbering dinosaur.

I like the collaborative work component, Conference, with its neat white board, but other users have wondered aloud whether it's any better than Lotus Notes or Microsoft Exchange. The question is, again, does Netscape do all the other things so much better than Lotus or Microsoft that I would want to switch? On the other hand, you might ask, why doesn't Netscape include a word processor and spreadsheet in Communicator? It's either too much or too little; Netscape didn't get it just right, so it might as well have got it all wrong.

This past Monday Netscape made two major announcements. In one, it announced an agreement with 40 other companies to establish standards for Extranets, the networks companies create for the purpose of sharing information with their customers and partners. The participants included Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, and Novell. (Guess which well-known software company was conspicuously absent from the list.)

It also announced a "vision and product roadmap for the networked enterprise." The products on the map included its next-generation client/server software suites--codenamed "Mercury" and "Apollo," respectively--as well as a crossware development tool--codenamed "Palomar."

Both of these announcements are thinly veiled assaults on Fortress Microsoft. "Cross platform," "open standards," and "common standards" are code words for "Unix spoken here." After all, what other significant OS is there besides Windows? (Mac users stop whining and grow up.) Microsoft doesn't come to these parties because it believes Windows NT will soon usurp Unix, and it doesn't want to do anything to slow its own conquest of all silicon-based life on the planet.

Companies like Sun and Silicon Graphics will be big losers when Unix goes down. That's why they're banding together with Netscape to make one last stand against Microsoft. But the marketplace is bringing in the verdict on Unix, and it's not pretty.

Industry after industry is switching from Unix workstations to PCs running NT on Intel processors because performance is comparable and the cost of hardware and programming talent is far lower. I've just heard a rumor that Wall Street is going NT. After that, Big Science is the only thing Unix has control over, and remember what happened to Cray Research (I know, bought by SGI, but that just proves my point, doesn't it). (Why do I feel like I'm trapped in the movie "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and that Bill Gates is the leader of the pod people?)

Microsoft has announced the preview release of its fourth-generation browser, MS Internet Explorer 4.0, that comes with its own collection of associated applications. The buzz is similar to that surrounding Communicator--too big, too much, too buggy.

Netscape and Microsoft are copying each other in their excesses. Not a smart strategy for either, but more likely a losing one for Netscape.

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