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Netscape 7.2 Released
scottfi writes "America Online has just released Netscape 7.2. Based on Mozilla 1.7, this latest version features better popup blocking, vCard support, an improved junk mail algorithm, better standards support, performance enhancements and several hundred other bug fixes. It also includes patches for recent security vulnerabilities. It is a little over a year since AOL shut down the Netscape browser division, laid off or reassigned the remaining engineers and withdrew from the day to day running of mozilla.org. At the time, they said that new versions of Netscape were unlikely. Earlier this year, they changed their minds and announced Netscape 7.2. More details about Netscape 7.2 are available at Netscape Browser Central, together with download links."
This is probably the last, dying gasp from the browser & brand that really did change the world.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
With the success of the Mozilla project, I fail to see why anyone would bother running Netscape anymore....
Don't Tread on Me
If AOL laid off all the Netscape engineers, then who made this release?
This is good. There is still a lot of brand recognition left with Netscape (suprisingly). Sometimes people feel happier using a newer version of a product they know (Netscape), as opposed to a product they _think_ they don't know (Mozilla / Firefox).
The release of Netscape helps in moving these people to a decent, secure browser. I think that Netscape no longer justifies the Nutscrape moniker it aquired in the later 4.x days.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
While I suppose it is kinda nice that they let the Netscape name live on, as a brower atleast, there really isn't a whole lot of reason for them to do so. I'm pretty sure that Mozilla/Firefox usage far exceeds the usage of Netscape 6/7. On ther other hand I suppose it's nice for anyone who actually needs that AOL garbage or who can't convince that PHB to go with a brower that destroyed Tokyo...
The text you refer to is still in the original place. If nothing is removed or taken, it is not stolen. I think the RIAA has really brainwashed you so that "stealing" means everything other than actual stealing.
I think that like many multi-nationals, AOL thought that OSS / Linux / Microsoft alternatives would never take off, that Microsoft would vanquish the evil free-software-movement. I think that they have decided that might not be the way things go, and they want to be still in the game.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Probably some of the smartest and most capable engineers and designers in the industry, who produced probably the most famous and symbolic product of the early Internet, and all that's left is a web page of farewell messages.
It isn't hard to notice the first priority was that everyone should be fired. THEN and ONLY then was the next version of the browser considered, after all the logos were taken off the buildings and the desks moved out, of course.
I find it very interesting how the early Internet is always referred to as "dot com", as if business and the media are straining to make it a pejorative. All that creativity and CAPITALISM generated great wealth for dozens of economies. Ebay, Amazon, etc. are all publically traded, profitable companies that wouldn't exist without the Internet.
But it seems that now since the checks have all been cashed, there's no room left for the people who built it, and that's a shame.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
However, it's VERY lightweight (11.5MB installer for Windows)
That's lightweight? Ugh. On dialup, that will still take me hours to download. I was expecting to see you give a number that was closer to Opera's 3.4MB download.
There are people out there who don't trust Mozilla.
Why?
Because it isn't run by a major corporation that they will be able to sue should there be any problems.
AOL puts a face (granted, a big, ugly one that makes most Slashdotter's teeth itch) on Mozilla that is recognized by technophobes as user-friendly. Additionally, AOL gets free advertisement out of it through name placement, and gets to take credit for a high-quality product. Netscape draws the previously mentioned crowd away from the Evil Corporation Which Must Not Be Named.
Does.... not.. compute...
NS 4 was the reason I landed on Mozilla back in those rough pre 1.0 days. Anything * was better than having a crash on every other page. If I had to pick a favorite version of NS, it would have to be pre 4. *(Other than IE, I never trusted activeX, seems I was right.)Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
...features better popup blocking
How'd they do that? My Mozilla 1.7 blocks 100% of pop-ups. You can't get much better than that.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
"...a statement of fact, and so can't be copyrighted."
What rubbish! Are you saying that newscasts, newspaper and magazine articles, and any other publication with factual information can't be copyrighted? You need to go back to pretend law school, mate.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
One would hope the latter...
There is at least one nasty bug that got fixed between 1.7 and 1.7.2.
-- This
So I find sites all the time that still do not work with Mozilla. Usually I go somewhere else. I haven't really encountered one where I had to switch to IE. In fact, the HDD on my Windows box crashed, and even though it's been replaced I've just been using my Linux box exclusively (and enjoying it greatly).
So here's the problem: I work for AOL/TW, and in order to access our paystubs (which they no longer send to us in paper form), we need to access an internal website. It doesn't work with Mozilla.
So I complained (email to site admin).
I got the generic response that the site only works with IE. So I wrote back asking why the browser WE release doesn't work on OUR own internal site... (sound of crickets... took two days for the first reponse, been waiting over a week for a second one).
It's not the first internal site that doesn't work with Mozilla, but it's the most frustrating... I've found work arounds for the ones I care about, except the one I mentioned above.
So why, after all the posturing about Netscape and Mozilla, after all the testifying we did against MS during the antitrust hearings, after realizing we are in direct competition with MS in many areas, WHY WHY WHY did we make the IE deal with them?
What's funny (or sad, depending on how you look at it), while people in my company are entitled to FREE AOL, hardly anybody uses it - it's that bad, we'd rather pay someone else. The only people I know that use it have another ISP and only let their kids use AOL for the content filtering.
Oh yeah, my bother uses it, too, but he was never the sharpest tool in the shed anyway.
Stupid sexy Flanders.