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the case of the poet in disguise

Wednesday, November 14th, 2001 at 7:06 PM Category: Meryl's Notes Blog No comments

I mentioned several times that there’s great stuff happening at id. Now, it’s taken a hiatus to make room for bad poetry.

the case of netscape’s version numbers

Lots of people are sharing some great resources today and making my bookmark file grow a few more megs. Let’s start with the shocker of the day.

As you know, Netscape recently release a new version of its browser. Right? What’s so shocking about that? Well… they released two versions. One that we all know about: 6.2. The other we thought we’d never see again… 4.79! I got the news straight from Zeldman. When 6.0 came out, I remember reading that they were not releasing any additional versions of 4.x. What’s up with that? Trying to make us take a step backward?

I know that some people love their Netscape 4.7 and the newer versions haven’t retained some of its wonderful features. Guilty. I’m one of those people. However, I use various browsers, old and new. All my bookmarks and email are in the old Netscape. Certainly, I’m all for standards and I’ve never been been afraid of progress or advances (I’ve got the shopping bills to prove it) — Netscape 4.7 works faster, bookmarks quickly, and runs smoothly. Netscape 6.2 is getting very close, but is missing one of the bookmark features and takes longer to load and run.

Am I going to download 4.79? Heck no. I don’t even know what has improved since the only link is directly to the file and no release notes. I searched high and low for information about 4.79 and most hits led to places that said certain issues on the Web site were fixed in Netscape version 4.9.something.something. According to the Netscape browser plans article, this version has security-related fixes. Plus, there are more interesting comments at Mozilla.

the case of the new pop ups

Pop ups… love ‘em or hate ‘em, they ain’t going away soon and advertisers have found a new trick. Got the lowdown from Webdesign-L. The latest trick is not so bad because it requires you to do something to make it happen. If you mouseover an ad, then you must be interested unless the ad is between point A and point B — you’re likely to move too fast between two points to make the "Boo! Pop" happen. See it in action by doing a mouseover the banner ads, however, if you’re using an older browser like (surprise!) Netscape 4.x, it won’t work — lucky you. Is that a BOO! or what?

Advantages: No closing windows. Proactive (you have to roll over it AND click on it).

Disadvantages: This is not the good kind of surprise. It doesn’t work properly in all browsers (this reason is practically a given for every project these days).

How is it done? Why should I tell you and risk your creating some? You’re right… I’m a teacher. It’s educational. Shame on me for asking such a question. It is DHTML. Dang, I wish I could remember the Web site where I found cool code that makes a thumbnail sized photo blow up when you roll over it just like with these ads. Ah-ha! I found it just for you. Even the author says, "The blowup works with all browsers of version 4.0 and later, with the exception of Navigator 6.0. Because DHTML support is not yet completed in Navigator 6.0, I created a Navigator 6.0-specific workaround. I’ll show you how to convert Navigator 4.0 DHTML to Navigator 6.0 DHTML in a future article."