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There were more than a few fools among the World-Wide Web community on April 1 thanks to Netscape Communications, developer of the popular Netscape browser, writes Tim Greenhalgh.

At the beginning of March the company released a beta version, Netscape 1.1b, which added significant improvements in speed and error-free access. But the limited-life software expired on Saturday as the company always said it would.

For unprepared Netscape users that meant cold sweats as they read the dialogue box detailing the termination. They found they could access the Netscape welcome page - and not a lot else.

When there, the page informed them that a new version was available for evaluation purposes, supporting new HTML3.0 features such as style sheets, customising add-ons and tabular formatting.

Unfortunately, all the world and their cousin wanted to access the ftp site which held the new version. The congestion was such that most users were met with an error message. Many are still waiting. . .