Netscape Communicator 4.61 notes

These notes cover important information for running Netscape Communicator 4.61 for UnixWare 7.

Netscape Communicator is free

The Netscape Communicator 4.61 browser is free. No separate license is required unless you use strong encryption; see Enabling SCO Strong Encryption Supplement.

Netscape Communicator and other Netscape Navigator browsers

See Removing existing versions of Netscape Navigator Gold.

Upgrading from a previous release of Navigator or Communicator

If you upgrade to Netscape Communicator 4.61 from Netscape Navigator 3.04 or Netscape Communicator 4.08, the personal bookmark and preferences files (in $HOME/.netscape) are retained on the system, preserving any customization that users have made. Home pages are also retained; which could result in confusion if the previous home page mentioned the browser version. For example, the home page and title bar might refer to Netscape Navigator 3.04, even if you are running Netscape Communicator 4.61.

Running Netscape Communicator on the system console

If you experience core dumps when running Netscape Communicator on the system console (as opposed to displaying it on a remote X server), the DISPLAY variable must be set to unix:0.0. If it is set to hostname:0.0, Communicator will dump core.

Running Netscape Communicator or SCOhelp as root on the system console

When you run communicator(X1) or scohelp(X1) as root on the system console, Netscape Communicator sets:

xhost +local:

This enables non-networked local connections to your X server, but also might allow other users logged into the system to make windows pop up on your screen without your permission.

To correct this, after exiting communicator or scohelp, enter:

xhost -local:

Viewing online documentation with Netscape browsers

To view online documentation with Netscape Navigator, Netscape Navigator Gold, or Netscape Communicator (instead of SCOhelp), open:

http://ServerName:457/dochome.html

Netscape browsers only support PostScript printing

If you do not have a PostScript-capable printer, you might want to use a public domain program, such as ghostview to convert the PostScript to a format that your printer recognizes. See ``Printing from Netscape Communicator to a non-PostScript printer''.

Netscape Communicator hangs

If Netscape Communicator or portions of Netscape Communicator hang, kill the Netscape Communicator process:

kill -9 processID

Then, restart Netscape Communicator.

Netscape Messenger hangs and delays

You might experience delays when using the Netscape Messenger function in Netscape Communicator due to network or mail server latency.

Connecting to local URLs

When accessing locally served URLs that contain the string localhost, Communicator might display popup dialog boxes with subprocess stdout/stderr information. These popups can be safely ignored. To prevent their appearance, substitute the system's hostname for localhost in the URL.

Japanese font support

Users running in the Japanese locale will notice that Japanese font support was added, but the application strings were not translated for performance reasons.

Browser warning messages

While running the browser as root, you might sometimes see this WARNING dialog:

   Cannot convert string %s to %s. WARNING: This program is an suid
   program or is being run by root... full text cannot be safely formatted.

You can safely ignore this message.

Edit option problems

The Edit Do Not Complete Address option does not always work and can cause problems. When this option is set, attempting to erase the portion of the address to the right of and including the ``@'' sign or clicking send may cause the Messenger's compose window and the browser to hang.

We recommend avoiding this option and avoiding editing email addresses when Do Not Complete Address is turned on.

Java applets sometimes hang in Webtop

When connected to a Webtop server, Java applets launched in a Communicator may occasionally hang. If this happens, reload the Webtop connection and restart the applet.

ftp display stalls

Communicator 4.61 might sometimes stall before listing any contents of an ftp URL. If this occurs, click Stop to terminate the load and the list of files will appear in the browser.