Netscape Communicator 4.51 Experience and Integration Ben Durbin
User Experience
Netscape Communicator 4.51 is the best quality release from Netscape to date. It includes more than 4000 enhancements to improve user experience, performance and reliability. Add in reduced download and install size, a new quality feedback system and improved documentation for using Communicator, and you have a highly interesting browser that people will want to look at.
While browsers such as Internet Explorer 5 have became large in size with a more complex engine, Netscape has decided to take a smaller but speedy approach to the market. Communicator 4.51 is meant to excel in performance yet come with a short download time.
A new feature that will help IT managers’ user experience is the Mission Control Desktop. One of the biggest problems enterprise IT managers face is the deployment and management of software in the enterprise. With Netscape Mission Control Desktop, IT managers can easily configure, deploy, manage, and update Communicator 4.51 from a central location.
Open Source Code
The hot innovation for products now is Open Source. Open Source cuts down development times and adds support by way of peer review. Other people are able to spot bugs and fix them. Also Netscape can be used on virtually any platform. Netscape previously committed to Open Source development and the Gecko browser engine is the first fruit of this labor.
Tighter Integration with Windows
During installation you are asked whether you would like to make Netscape your default browser and Netcenter as your homepage. If you choose yes to this you will notice that it also changes the IE settings to have Netcenter as the homepage. Also, after installation you have three Netscape Icons automatically placed on your desktop. These moves are made to challenge IE in its own Windows environment.
