Netscape Communicator 4.78 tips

Questions about Wine on Linux
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=CO= Windler
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Netscape Communicator 4.78 tips

Post by =CO= Windler »

Because in Netscape Communicator the HTML table rendering strongly differs from modern web browsers and the integrated HTML editor can output plain HTML without cluttering everything with links to external CSS garbage, it is a still useful tool for displaying downloaded historical websites and for writing compact self-contained passive HTML pages (but always verify formatting in a modern browser and where needed edit table formatting by hand).

However the native Netscape Communicator 4.x is almost impossible to install on modern Linux because the binary blobs in the install package are incompatible with modern kernels. So on my Linux Mint 20.1 64bit after hand-installing it with "dpkg -i --force-..." (needed for many incompatible additional libraries) the binaries (stripped ELF for kernel 2.0.0??) only made segfault and uninstalling all that forced trash needs as much manual labour. Thus Netscape Communicator 4.78 is much easier and safer to install using the windoze version in WINE. On WINE 6.3 in Windows 98 mode it runs almost flawlessly beside some font bugs.

bugs

- The font selection dropdown menu in the browser settings is distorted; text field and buttons are way too high and partly cut off.

- Many TTF fonts are displayed light grey (look washed out like overexposed) instead of black. Other special Windows fonts (Windings etc.) display garbage or rectangular blocks instead of characters.

tips

Most usable are some "Ubuntu" TTF fonts. Because use of Java and scripts may be unsafe now and it can not open many modern webpages anyway (it lacks most HTTPS encryption modes), it is not recommended for websurfing. Thus enter into its browser settings the proxy "127.0.0.1" with port 80 to disconnect it from the actual internet and only allow the local webserver for reading man pages through dwww etc.
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=CO= Windler
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Bug: Netscape Communicator 4.78 (text box redraw)

Post by =CO= Windler »

Since some releases (6.18 or such) Wine has general problems with updating Win98 text panes, so e.g. Netscape 4.78 (that I use for HTML text editing) refused to redraw the text area of resized windows and displayed garbage when typing. I didn't examine this bug closer but use the stable Wine 6.3 for this instead.
Bamm
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Re: Netscape Communicator 4.78 tips

Post by Bamm »

I see the same issues you mentioned in Netscape Communicator 4.80 under Wine 6.21.
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