I agree with the suggestion to use Communicator 4.06. As long as they are free, they will be buggy. Communicator 4.06 is the lesser of the two evils.
I was a devout Netscape user (Navigator, not Communicator) until I tried IE 4.01. The main advantages IE has over Netscape is the speed with which IE can retrieve cached pages. IE is very fast at getting to previously viewed pages and doesn't seem to need to go to the hard drive for everything previous to the page you're currently viewing. I even tried using a RAM disk for this purpose with Netscape, and IE is still much quicker. While these problems may not be as evident with a faster Mac and a direct Internet connection, right now I'm stuck with my 7600/132 and a 28.8k dialup modem.
IE also seems to be much faster loading Java when necessary, and with Netscape, if Java had been loaded while browsing, it caused at least a 30 second delay in closing the program. This does not occur with IE.
All that said, I also have problems with Javascript on IE, causing errors on SI and with other sites. I'm also frustrated with not having the ability to set the link expiry option with a fixed number of days. I'm tired of links expiring in only a few days. Web pages also just seem to look better in Netscape, and I believe most web designers still author their HTML to look best with it.
I hold out hope for the Mozilla 5 project, and if the benchmarks published today on Mac OS Rumors from someone using it are correct, then it could whip the heck out of IE and I'll switch back in a heartbeat. |
