Surprise! There's a bug in Netscape Navigator 3.0.x.
Yes, there's a bug in versions 3.0 through 3.0.2 of Netscape Navigator that sometimes causes Navigator to forget what protocols have been registered by Seeker and other utilities that register protocols with Navigator.
Fortunately there is an easy workaround to this bug. When Navigator is not running, place a copy of the included Netscape Preferences file into the "Netscape ƒ" folder that's found in the Preferences folder of your startup disk's System Folder.
When the Netscape Preferences file is in place, follow the instructions included with the protocol registering utility that you want to use with Netscape Navigator.
The only drawback to this workaround is that you'll need to reconfigure your favorite settings in Netscape Navigator when you launch Navigator again.
I've been told since releasing Seeker that there's an AppleScript applet available that works like Netscape Preferences Fix but lets you save your settings, but Netscape Preferences Fix doesn't require AppleScript or the scripting additions needed for the applet to work.
If you're interested, this applet can be found at http://www.solvare.se/solvare/scripting/examples.html .
What's a "protocol" that's been "registered" with Netscape Navigator?
Most email and file transfer (ftp) programs these days include utilities (usually a simple AppleScript applet) that tell Navigator that you'd rather use the email or file transfer program instead of Netscape Navigator's built-in email or file transfer components.
After these utilities are run (usually just once), each time Netscape Navigator encounters a specific URL protocol, it will pass it off to the email or file transfer program instead of trying to handle the URL itself.
These URLs usually start with mailto or ftp, and mailto and ftp are both commonly used protocols.
Seeker itself registers a few protocols with Navigator, one for each of the search engines that Seeker knows about. Because Navigator knows how to handle the mrp protocol, for example, entering mrp:Peter Belsley into Navigator's Location bar would send Navigator to the Macintosh Resource Page's search results, where you can find pictures of Eric's beautiful baby boy.
What exactly does the Netscape Preferences Fix do?
The included Netscape Preferences file has an additional 'STR#' resource with an ID of 2003 that Netscape Navigator uses to store the information it needs in order to launch a certain application when a certain URL protocol is encountered.
Seeker and other similar utilities depend on Netscape Navigator's ability to recognize specific protocols, but Navigator 3 isn't able to remember newly registered protocols because it hasn't saved the needed information to the 'STR#' resource in the Netscape Preferences because the required ID just isn't there.
In other words, Netscape's engineers made a mistake. Nobody would be more glad than me if this simple problem were fixed in a future version of Navigator.
Stefan's Netscape Preferences Fix is free to use by registered Seeker users.
More information about Seeker, an amazing "web search helper" that aims to cut web search time in half, can be found at the Seeker home page at http://antioch-college.edu/~stefan/seeker.html .
