OS/2 e-Zine! - My Netscape

My Netscape - by Chris Wenham

Summary: My Netscape is sizing up to be a formidable portal with some very nice features. But both the site and the browser needed to use it are both in beta testing phase, meaning that not only are several promised content areas missing, but you're liable to suffer a few crashes too.

A strange thing happened on the way to the portal this week. When we began planning this roundup of Internet Portals we anticipated that we might have to skip Netscape's Netcenter, since its customization features were not yet available. But a few days ago Netscape started the first beta of My Netscape and we thought at first we'd have to change our plans at the last minute to include it in this week's review. But when we went to test it we discovered that My Netscape makes use of Javascript functions that aren't supported in the current Netscape 2.02 for OS/2. While you could set up an account, there wasn't any means of customizing the available content channels. So, the My Netscape review was scratched once more. But then, at the second to last minute, what should get posted to IBM's web site but the first public beta of Netscape Communicator for OS/2! With this, we could suddenly gain full access to My Netscape's customization features. The review was back on again, with barely a day to the deadline to spare.

Since both the web site and the program needed to access it are in beta or "preview" stages, we cannot consider it as part of our Editor's Choice selection. What follows should be considered more of a "first looks" than a full review. When both products leave their testing stage, expect to see full follow-up reviews here in OS/2 e-Zine!

Content and Features

Netscape has been in the news a lot these past few months, signing deals left and right to line up content and services for its debut into the Portal game. What it's showing (.GIF, 30K) at the time I write this review are the usual newsfeeds and a couple of very nifty gadgets, but not as much content as other portals currently offer.

One extremely promising "gadget" is the address book (.GIF, 3K) -- a virtual Rolodex of names, addresses and phone numbers. What makes it so nifty is the fact that it can actually import and export address books with your favorite PIM -- including Lotus Organizer for OS/2. This is something I've never seen a web page do before. If you save your Organizer's address book in a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file, Communicator can actually upload it to Netcenter, which then reads the addresses within an adds them to your customized page. Likewise, it can also export your Netcenter address book to a file for importing back into Organizer or any other PIM that supports the CSV format.

This import/export feature can also be found in the bookmark channel -- a section of your custom page that lists your favorite bookmarks. Netcenter can read a Netscape bookmark file and import the first 100 sites it finds.

Gadgets included purely for gadget appeal include a fully functional calculator (.GIF, 3K), believe it or not. Using a bit of Javascript wizardry, this simple calculator performs all of the basic tasks without needing to load a Java applet -- meaning there's no wait while a virtual machine gets started.

For other content, Netscape has teamed up with Excite to provide some limited channels of specialized news and links, some of which are available now. In the Preferences set-up page there's an entire hierarchy of specialized channels geared towards all tastes, but all grayed-out, presumably to come online sometime in the future.

For "buddy lists" or "pagers", Netscape has chosen AOL's Instant Messenger (AIM for short). Unfortunately if you follow the link to download AIM from Netcenter you won't be given the option of downloading the Java version that works in OS/2. The script that identifies your platform will tell you there's no version of AIM you can run, and sends you right back to where you came from. You can still use the Java version of AIM if you want to, but you'll have to download it from AOL's site, and not Netscape's.

User Interface

For a web site, My Netscape sure acts like it wasn't. Channels and tools can be "minimized" (.GIF, 8K) and "maximized" (.GIF, 9K) by clicking on the toggle button in its title bar. This action is actually more like "rollup" and "rolldown", since the title bar remains visible and all of the channel panes below are shifted up. The only thing breaking the seamlessness of this feature and reminding you that it is a web page after all is the necessary reloading of the web page after each roll-up and roll-down.

Also on each title bar is an 'X' button to close or delete the channel and a button for setting the channel's preferences. Like My Yahoo, each channel can be customized to fit your likes and dislikes as well as adding or deleting content. Click on the preferences button for the weather channel (not to be confused with the "Weather Channel" on cable TV) and you can tell it what cities you want weather reports for.

Unfortunately we found that, unlike My Yahoo, the user cannot yet customize the colors My Netscape uses to display its channels. This was a setback for me, since the laptop I use dithers the color bars and makes the page look ugly.

Conclusions

My Netscape is coming together quickly and looks to be a potential My Yahoo killer. Even as I write this, checking back reveals that they added a Notepad widget (.GIF, 4K) to go along with the Calculator. Apparently you can now jot down reminders and save them directly on your page!

But the problems we found with it are its slim content and its pickiness about which browser you use. It's not surprising that Netscape wants you to use Navigator 3.0 or higher (and yes, we tried running Netscape for OS/2 with the "-3" switch, it didn't work). Hopefully by the time My Netscape completes its testing phase, so will have Communicator for OS/2.

My Netscape

by Netscape
MSRP: Free

Chris Wenham is the Senior Editor for OS/2 e-Zine! -- a promotion from Assistant Editor which means his parking spot will now be wide enough to hold his bicycle and a trailer.