Netscape Announces Navigator 2.0 -- Last week, Netscape announced version 2.0 of its widely-used Netscape Navigator Web browser, and the first public betas may be available as early as this week. Version 2.0 will be split into two products: Netscape Navigator, an enhanced Web browser, and Navigator Gold, which will also provide Web authoring capabilities. Navigator 2.0 will feature improved integrated email and newsgroup capabilities, integration of Adobe PDF, Apple QuickTime, and Macromedia Director playback via plug-ins, support for Java applets to create interactive objects, plus Netscape's own Java-based scripting language. However, people with a bitter taste in their mouths from the non-standard "enhancements" to HTML included in previous releases had better break out the Rolaids right now. Although Netscape supports a good portion of what's likely to become HTML 3.0, it also includes a bevy of new non-standard tags and a feature called "frames" (separate from the HTML 3.0 <BANNER> tag) that enables authors to split the display area into a number of independent regions. [GD]

http://home.netscape.com/comprod/products/ navigator/version_2.0/index.html