Netscape Communications Corp announced Custom Netscape, a way for companies, ISPs and other OEM partners to integrate content and services from the Netcenter site with their own content and applications. The service will go into beta in mid-November with a select group of testers. This technology would seem to be an extension of the company’s Netscape customization tool kit that offers companies the opportunity to alter the face of the browser (10/01/98) – the company is now doing the same things with it portal. Netscape also announced Smart Download with a ‘resume’ feature should a software download be interrupted. There is already a basic resume feature in Communicator but, says David Pann, Netscape’s group project manager for its computing and internet channel, it had limited capabilities that weren’t very usable. The new feature contains a new user interface that detects breaks in connections automatically and makes the restarting procedure easier. That should be ready by the first half of next month, says Pann. The service uses a file format developed by the company and Software Builders International called Internet Download Profile (IDP), which the pair intend to submit to internet standards organizations. Netscape is mooting the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which along with its many other roles, also does some MIME-type work, which Netscape’s engineers feel may be appropriate for IDP. Nothing has been submitted yet to either body.
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