Netscape 4 - any key differences between 4.7 and 4.8?

[piskie]

I am rationalising my testing Browsers and intent to represent NN 4.X browsers with NN 4.8.

What am I likely to miss by reviewing in 4.8 that would be a likely problem in NN 4.7

I am particularly interested in CSS positioning and interpretation of the CSS Box Model.

[TheDoctor]

My advice is to hide CSS positioning from Netscape 4.x Give users of these browsers a basic layout, just that bit more attractive than basic HTML.

Advantage for you of doing this is that it gives you a means of "looking under the hood" is things go wrong with the positioning. You can use NN4 to check that the basic CSS on a page is correct, before worrying if you've made a mistake with the more sophsticated stuff.

[piskie]

Thanks, but not quite what I asked.

Absolute positioning is used throughout the site.
I therefore need to use CSS with NN 4.X series of browsers otherwise the page looks like a jigsaw puzzle.

I can supply a different CSS file to NN 4.X by using @import so CSS that is too clever is hidden from older browsers.

What I want to know is if a page previews OK in NN 4.8 is there likely to be a CSS bug in NN4.7 that didn't show up?

[jetboy_70]

If the information I have is correct, there is no difference at all between the rendering engines of these two Netscape versions. I believe the the final update of the actual browser component was 4.08. Every version after related to secondary parts of the Navigator package.

Can anyone confirm?

[choster]

IIRC the rendering habits of the NS4 browser have been essentially unchanged since 4.76. The only bug fixes since then relate to plugin compatibiliy or security.

[firstreflex]

There probably isn't any difference but I chose 4.7 just to be on the safe side, it was released in September 1999 where as 4.8 was released in August 2002 the same time as 7.0.

[TheDoctor]

not quite what I asked

Sorry :(

[piskie]

OK Doc
That wasn't meant to be a criticism, just to continue the thread.

I am choosing NN 4.8 over NN 4.7 because of compatibility problems but there is a nagging doubt that pages could be buggy in NN 4.7 without me knowing.

I am just looking for guidance from those here that no doubt know the important differences between the 2 versions.

[encyclo]

You'll find no difference between Netscape 4.7 and 4.8 with respect to CSS rendering. However, 4.7 is more prevalent than 4.8, so you might want to choose 4.79 as your testing platform. 4.8 was a special order for one company which was released publically but immediately archived and never recommended for download. IIRC the vast bulk of the changes from 4.79 were to do with the email client.

As for earlier versions, 4.08 to 4.72 are quite unusable, so you don't need to worry about them (they crash so often that there's no-one left using them any more), although there are a very few people using 4.08.

[piskie]

Yes my logs accross a number of sites show NN 4.7X to be the most prolific, but I have found NN 4.7 versions cause conflicts and crashes but NN 4.8 appears quite stable. Once the intrusive bits have been uninstalled and deleted, it behaves itself.

So although I am primarily concerned with NN4.7X I would really like to use NN 4.8
Hence my question.