April 16, 1996 [Image] Netscape Promises a Fix For 'Daylight-Saving Bug' -------------------------------------------------------- Related Article * Netscape's Silence on Bug Angers Users (From Monday's CyberTimes) -------------------------------------------------------- By JAMIE MURPHY [N] etscape Communication Corporation acknowledged on Monday that its Navigator browser contains a bug that causes page caching problems after a computer's clock is adjusted for Daylight Saving Time. A company spokeswoman said the problem would be fixed with a new release "in a couple of weeks" and that the company would immediately begin posting temporary workarounds on its World Wide Web home page. On Monday afternoon, the company added a new section to its home page titled "Daylight Saving Time Update." "Having trouble reloading pages?" the page asks, then adds, "It could be because of Daylight Saving Time." Although the bug was first reported on April 7, the day that clocks were set forward one hour, Netscape did not alert users of its Navigator browser to the problem until Monday, after The New York Times on the Web reported that angry messages about the company's silence were appearing on Usenet news groups. "We are committed to fixing the problem right away," Netscape's spokeswoman, Chris Holten, said Monday afternoon, "and our staff of engineers are working around the clock. We are extremely sorry for any inconvenience this problem may be causing our customers." Holten added, "A flash item will be going up on our Web site today explaining to customers what the problem is with the Daylight Savings Time bug." The short-term solution will be a list of workarounds to which Netscape will link from the 'Daylight Saving Time Update' section of its home page. But those quick fixes are probably going to be little more than the ones already published on newsgroups or by Instant Sports, which was among the first Netscape publishers to alert the company to the problem. The permanent bug fix will not arrive for several weeks, Holten said. It will be included in two separate software packages: Netscape Navigator 2.02 and the next beta release of Atlas, a version of Navigator that includes Internet telephony and 3D support. As of Monday evening, Netscape had not posted its suggested fixes. However, Usenet postings and the Instant Sports page were offering these suggestions: * Use Navigator's "Network Preferences" option to set the disk-cache to zero. This will keep the browser from saving graphics and text but will increase the download time for frequently visited Web sites. * Use the preferences option to clear the disk cache before reloading an updated home page. This is a time- consuming chore even for casual users. It is not at all practical for people who are creating or editing Web pages. * Set your computer's internal clock back one hour to Standard Time. The problem with this fix is that it will stamp newly created files with the wrong time and, eventually, with the wrong date. * A more complicated solution -- and one that works with Windows platforms only -- is to add the following line to the autoexec.bat file: SET TZ=EDT4 (or CDT5 for central daylight time, MDT6 for mountain daylight time, or PDT7 for Pacific daylight time), then reboot the computer. -------------------------------------------------------- Related Sites Following are links to the external Web sites mentioned in this article. These sites are not part of The New York Times on the Web, and The Times has no control over their content or availability. When you have finished visiting any of these sites, you will be able to return to this page by clicking on your Web browser's "Back" button or icon until this page reappears. * Netscape Home Page * Instant Sports * The comp.infosystems.www.browsers.ms-windows news group on Usenet. * Daylight Saving Time Bug Web page from Instant Sports. Home | Sections | Contents | Search | Forums | Help Copyright 1996 The New York Times Company ----------------------------------------------------------