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MailBITS/25-Sep-95
By the time you see this, Tonya and I will have moved into our new house in Issaquah, Washington. We simply needed more space to escape the gravitational pull of our computers and explore the most appropriate ways to integrate technology into life. TidBITS will be moving as well, so if you need its new snail mail address for items that can't travel via the Internet, send email to <ace@tidbits.com>. We think we have the transition figured out in terms of where to site our Apple Internet Server, although we'll personally be limited to modem connections to the Internet until U.S. West installs our ISDN line. Needless to say, please be gentle with email and don't send large attachments without asking first. Please also try to bear with us through any periods of server flakiness during the move. [ACE]
New DeskWriter Drivers for PCI Macs -- Last week, Hewlett-Packard released version 6.0.3 of its DeskWriter drivers which attempt to correct serial printing problems on the Power Mac 7200, 7500, and 9500 using HP's DeskWriter, DeskWriter C, 510, 520, 540, 550c and 560c printers. (See TidBITS-294 for a description of serial printing problems on these machines.) So far, indications are that the new drivers are working well for most people; however, some users report various (possibly unrelated) problems remain. The drivers are available on HP's CompuServe and AOL forums as well as via the Internet, and are distributed as a disk images between 1 and 2 MB in size. The URL below points to the English version; localized versions for German, French, Dutch, European English, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish are available in the same directory. [GD]
ftp://ftp-boi.external.hp.com//pub/printers/software/dw110en.hqx
Adobe Buys Ceneca -- Adobe Systems announced last week that it is buying Ceneca Communications, Inc., makers of the not-yet-shipping World Wide Web production and site-management programs PageMill and SiteMill, big hits at Boston's Macworld Expo in August. (See TidBITS-290.) The amount of money involved was not disclosed, and Adobe is expected to integrate Acrobat PDF and other Adobe technologies into the products over time. Pricing and product availability is expected to be announced in the next few weeks. [GD]
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
La Cie Software Updates Online -- Users of La Cie's Silverlining disk formatter and other software products have long been frustrated by La Cie's software update policy. First, La Cie never told customers about updates, and when you learned about them yourself, obtaining them involved the irksome process of sending your original disks to La Cie along with payment. Given that history, La Cie customers will rejoice to learn that La Cie has set up a Web site which, along with some decent technical information and product info, includes updaters to current versions of its Silverlining, Silverscanner, and Joule RAID software. You still must have an original version to upgrade, but this sure beats relying on the postal service or word of mouth. Possibly the only folks happier about this than La Cie's customers are La Cie's technical support staff. [GD]
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