Netscape SmartMarks

Netscape SmartMarks -- SmartMarks is one of two new releases from Netscape Communications Corporation (the other being Netscape Chat) that give users a preview of the seamless integration with Netscape as promised by the Netscape Client Application Programming Interface (NCAPI). SmartMarks offers many benefits to the serious webulite, including the ability to manage thousands of bookmarks, automatically monitor and track changes in web pages, quickly search common web databases, receive updated bulletins on rapidly changing web sites, and more. In addition, SmartMarks comes pre-installed with the 300 most popular web sites according to Yahoo. Quick and efficient Boolean web searches can be conducted with Infoseek, Lycos, and Web Crawler, as well as Yahoo, so that even the most elusive and esoteric of topics can be easily found on the web. SmartMarks can also manage your Netscape Navigator bookmarks by automatically loading and seamlessly integrating itself into the Netscape Bookmark menu every time you start Netscape. One of SmartMarks' most interesting features is its support for the new bulletins HTML tag. Web page designers can code important new information enclosed as bulletins that give users a quick summary of recent changes. With SmartMarks, users can easily track and quickly download bulletins from assorted web pages in order to efficiently discover what's new on the web. SmartMarks is not without its faults, however. Most importantly, SmartMarks is quite slow, especially on older 486 and 386 computers with 8 MBs of RAM or less (6 MBs of RAM is an absolute minimum for running SmartMarks). This has unfortunately lead more than a few users to abandon SmartMarks and its numerous features. Also, it will be far easier for many users to manage their bookmarks from within Netscape rather than having to work with SmartMarks as well. If you do have the necessary hardware and demanding web needs, I definitely recommend SmartMarks -- its management of bookmarks, bulletins, and web pages alone is enough to recommend trying it out. Pros: Efficient bookmark management, web page monitoring, quick searching, and more Cons: Sllooowwwww, requires 6 Megs of RAM to perform at all New: Entirely revised interface, new options, bug fixes, more Version Reviewed: 2.0 Official Release Date of Review: 4/29/96 Reviewer: Forrest Stroud apps conference Main Menu