Netscape Communicator for Solaris 4.7
Release Notes

Updated August 20, 1999

Contents

• What's New in Version 4.7
• Before You Install
• General Issues
• Mail, Address Books, and Pinpoint Addressing
• Navigator
• International
• Java and JavaScript
• Solaris Issues

For an overview of the new features provided by Communicator 4.7, see the Tour of New Features.

What's New in Version 4.7

• Fixes to improve security
• Simplified process for obtaining digital certificates
• New 56-bit DES ciphers added to both export and US versions (requires new SSL cipher suite server-side)
• Various bug fixes

Before You Install

General Issues

• IMAP mail users: Certain servers may prevent you from renaming or deleting subscribed mail folders if you attempt to move deleted messages to the Trash folder. If a command failed error message appears after you attempt to delete a mail folder, choose File => Subscribe to unsubscribe the Trash folder.

• If you change your user name on an IMAP server, you must restart Communicator for the name change to take effect.

• Exported certificate names are appended with letters or numbers. Communicator doesn't check for duplicate names, so make sure you use a unique name for each certificate.

• Remove any CSS objects from files before opening the files with Composer.

• Delete any zero-length cert7.db file from the $HOME/.netscape directory, or Communicator may crash at startup.

Mail, Address Books, and Pinpoint Addressing

• Some IMAP servers cause an error when you move a mail message from a subfolder to the Inbox while in Messenger. As a workaround, file the message in a top-level folder and then move the file to the Inbox.

• When you delete ns_imap folders, Communicator deletes any mail filters you configure. If you suspect corrupted mail summary files, delete only the files, not the folders or directories.

• If you upgrade from Navigator 3.0x, you must manually import your Address Book. To import your Address Book, choose Communicator => Address Book to open the Address Book window. Then choose File => Import.

• To import an 8-bit data address book from Communicator 4.0x into Communicator 4.7, change the file extension of the LDIF file to .4ld. Then, import the LDIF file using the new extension.

• You can create multiple Address Books. Pinpoint addressing searches the first 15 Address Books in the Address Book window. If you have more than 15 Address Books, select the 15 you want to use by reordering the books in the Address Book window.

• Pinpoint addressing searches for matches against the display name, last name, email address, and nickname. If you want exact matches against a nickname to have precedence over matches against the other fields, add the following line to your $HOME/.netscape/preferences.js file:

  user_pref("ldap_2.autoComplete.nicknameHasPrecedence",true);

Navigator

• Some HTTP proxy servers do not support Internet keywords and display the Could not find host error message when you supply only one keyword.

• When Communicator updates a page, it checks for changes in HTML descriptions, but not changes within individual elements on the page. Because the HTML description of an image can remain the same even after you update the content of the image, you can force an update by using the following meta tags:

  <META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no-cache">
  <META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="60">

• Communicator saves binary files from an FTP server as HTML by default.

International

• If you attach vCards (Personal Cards) that contain 8-bit characters to your outgoing mail messages:
  • Choose Edit => Preferences => Mail & Newsgroups => Identity => Edit Card to display the New Card dialog box. Then click the Contact tab and do one of the following:
    • Enter the Address, City, State, Zip Code, and Country information in the Address field separated by a carriage return (for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters) or a space (for Western/accented characters).

    • Insert an ASCII character (such as "+" or "-") at the beginning of each field except the Address field.

• ISO 8859-15 charset support has been added to Xterm to provide European support.

• Some email sender applications use UNKNOWN as the charset name in the MIME2-encoded subject field. In these cases, Communicator uses the global default (View => Character Set => Set Default Character Set).

• To update Preferences that you created for a previous version of Communicator, choose Edit => Preferences => Navigator => Languages. Either confirm that the selections in the right pane are correct, or delete and reenter the selections. Click OK to save your changes.

Java and JavaScript

• JavaScript 1.3 contains an ECMA-compliant fix for assignments so that if (a=b) is no longer interpreted as if (a==b). You can update the code or, if you want the old behavior, specify the following in the $HOME/.netscape/preferences.js file:
  <SCRIPT language="JavaScript1.2">.

• If you use an applet that uses RMI callbacks, call netscape.security.PrivilegeManager.enablePrivilege("UniversalConnect") before your first call into the RMI runtime.

• Changes to Java classes have been made to improve security and simplify internal use of the reflection API.

Solaris Issues

• The DirectColor visual class is no longer supported. If you specify a DirectColor visual using the -visual argument, or connect to an X-server that implements DirectColor as the default visual class, Communicator uses a TrueColor visual instead.

• If you register a MIME handler for application/x-javascript, errors occur when you attempt to display pages with that MIME type. For example, if you use the Navigator Applications preference [menu item?] to add a new MIME type for application/x-javascript and then choose Save To Disk, a core dump error occurs when you display pages containing that MIME type.

• If you attempt to start Messenger the first time you run Communicator on your system, Messenger may quit with an Illegal instruction message. As a workaround, start Communicator for the first time, then exit and start Communicator again before you start Messenger.

• If you want to locate your sent mail, drafts, and templates folders on an IMAP server, first create the folders on the server. Then, choose Edit => Preferences => Mail & Newsgroups => Copies and Folders and specify the folders in which you want to store sent mail messages, drafts, and templates.
• You cannot drag and drop messages from one IMAP server to another. Instead, use the File toolbar button to copy messages from one IMAP server to another.

• If you delete your only IMAP server and then add a POP server, Communicator may quit.

• In the Help Index window, the Look for field is small and may be difficult to read. To increase the size of the window, choose Edit => Preferences => Appearance => Fonts and decrease the Variable Width font size. In addition, you can also scroll down through the Index to see the various entries.

• If you receive Motif warnings in dialog boxes and want to send those warnings to the command line, add the following lines to your ~/.Xresources file:

  Netscape*useStdoutDialog:False
  Netscape*useStderrDialog:False

• If you want to install special Java files in Communicator, set the CLASSPATH environment variable. Communicator uses CLASSPATH to find local .class files. If you set CLASSPATH in a user's environment, only the .jar files and directories specified in the CLASSPATH are searched. If you set the CLASSPATHvariable, verify that each .jar file in $MOZILLA_HOME/java/classes is listed individually in CLASSPATH.

• The previous workaround that fixes the freezing of the Edit and Compose windows on startup has changed. The new workaround prevents the spell checker from locking files over NFS, thereby preventing the window freezing problem. To implement the improved fix, replace the following line:

  user_pref("editor.disable_spell_checker", true);

  with:

  user_pref("editor.dont_lock_spell_files", true)

• If Communicator exhibits consistent problems on pages containing Javascript, remove the following lines from your ~/.mailcap file:
  application/x-javascript;;\
  x-mozilla-flags=save

• Communicator ignores the TMPDIR environment variable when creating temporary files.

• To create an IMAP container folder on servers that do not support folders containing both messages and subfolders, use a trailing slash when creating the folder. For example:
  toplevel/