10/19/99

By Doug Bedell / The Dallas Morning News

America Online 5.0 and Netscape Communicator 4.7 may both be worth the download - one for its new features, the other as a memento of the once-heady browser war.

America Online 5.0 (www.aol.com) offers two additional screen names for families, a personal calendar, a new and partially customizable opening screen and You've Got Pictures, which enables photographers to get their Kodak snapshots in digital form.

Communicator 4.7 (home.netscape.com), on the other hand, boasts little more than its 4.6 predecessor, save some bug fixes, the Winamp MP3 audio file player and AOL's Instant Messenger 3.0.

Since AOL purchased Netscape in March, the nation's largest Internet service provider has placed Communicator developments on the back burner. AOL has said it was mainly interested in acquiring the company for its Netcenter Internet portal site and e-commerce expertise.

An open-ended delay in the release of the much-anticipated Communicator 5.0, originally scheduled for summer, has caused hand-wringing among the browser's faithful. And the ensuing exodus of top Netscape leaders, including co-founder and browser pioneer Mark Andreessen, has done nothing to quell their worries.

Netscape's browser, an application that allows computer users to see and work with information on the Web, once was the dominant choice at home and the office. Over the last year, however, usage has tumbled at the feet of Microsoft's product, Internet Explorer. Various industry measurements now show Explorer may now own up to 75 percent of the market.

Technologically, companies - including new owner AOL - have found it easier to combine Microsoft's browser with their own software applications, giving Communicator fans even more reason to worry.

Online discussion boards and techie pundits have begun speculating that a white flag has been raised in the fierce, long-running battle for browser supremacy. A broadcast segment last week with ZDTV hosts Leo Laporte and Kate Botello even featured conjecture that Communicator 5.0 will never see the light of day.

Netscape has declined to discuss unannounced features in Communicator 5.0 that it says are responsible for the delay. But at Seybold Seminars, an information company specializing in the Internet and print publishing, vice president Matt McKenzie is among those who believe Netscape will rebound with a hefty 5.0 offering that will merge e-mail and instant messaging in a newfangled bundle.

No matter what happens, Mr. McKenzie said in an online column last week, "I'm not going to get too sentimental about Netscape's demise. They had their shot - in fact, they had several - and they blew all of them."

The new AOL 5.0 is only available for Pentium-based machines running Windows 95/98. The Welcome screen is redesigned with channels down the left side of a less-cluttered area for features. With My Places, users can now insert five of their own AOL destinations directly into the menu for quick access. Sites outside AOL's domain, unfortunately, still can only be saved in the AOL Favorites section.

An icon has been added for You've Got Pictures, AOL's partnership with Kodak. When pictures are developed by a participating Kodak lab, the film processor sends digital copies to the photographer's e-mail account. From there, the images can be distributed easily to friends and family by e-mail or posted to home pages.

Another feature, My Calendar, builds on the daily calendar programming created through AOL's acquisition of When.com, which also powers a similar Netcenter feature by Netscape.

Beyond that, AOL has added a Save-Replace option to the Favorites section. That makes collecting Web addresses easier, allowing them to be transferred to a floppy or a hard drive with the press of a single button.

Other new features from AOL 5.0 include enhanced services for high-speed connections and Shop@AOL, a service that offers merchandise from name brands such as The Gap, a section for personal buying guides and a product search engine.