For nearly a year it seemed that no one would ever be able to close on Netscape's huge lead, but the gap has narrowed considerably during the last few months. The release of Internet Explorer 3.0 and its own powerful set of features sparked a huge war of words between the David and Goliath of the Internet, Netscape Communications Corporation and Microsoft.
Not to be outdone by the newest Microsoft release, version 3.0 of Netscape "Navigator" was released less than a week later. The latest incarnation of the browser once again offers new features that help distance it from the competition, but one gets the sense that this time the additions are more evolutionary rather than the revolutionary features of old.
The 3.0 release includes several built-in plug-in modules, including a basic audio module for playing files of AIFF, MIDI, WAV, and AU sound formats (LiveAudio); a VRML module for experiencing distributed, interactive 3D VRML worlds complete with text, images, animation, video, sound, and music (Live3D); video modules for playing inline AVI videos (LiveVideo) and MOV movies (QuickTime); and an app that allows for real-time full-duplex audio conferencing (CoolTalk).
Multi-column text, horizontal and vertical spacing, improved frames support, the font face tag, and a 'set as wallpaper' option highlight the list of additional new capabilities found in Navigator 3.0.
