Slashdot Mirror
Netscape Reborn?
An anonymous reader writes "BetaNews reports that Netscape has been revived with Firefox backing. 'Despite media reports and industry pundits over the years relegating Netscape to Internet history books, AOL has restarted the browser's development. The company plans to bring back a refreshed Netscape browser based on Firefox.'"
Might be, or it might be that they still think that there is marketing value in the name, to keep it alive.
A lot of us chose to use Netscape when we realized that IE was a piece of crap. We were a small but dedicated group. After Netscape died, a lot of us moved to Mozilla, where we brought our passion and dedication. Yes, Netscape may have returned from the dead, but it's not *our* Netscape, it's a familiar-looking (and smelly) corpse animated by the dark AOL magic that seems to autospawn new AOL coasters every month. Netscape of lore is dead. It might steal marketshare from IE because of the familiar name, but somehow I doubt users will get excited about it the way they did for the original Netscape.
This is GOOD. Firefox will still be around- AOL can't make it go anywhere.
But having Netscape back is great for many reasons. Having a commercial vendor chasing bug fixes and adding features helps, but most importantly Firefox was born from the Ashes of Netscape, but the code was set free first. The more companies that can see a project like this happen the more they'll be inclined to release code that they've run out of legs to push.
IBM has helped pave the way- opening big chunks of code and hoping others will help them push the projects along, but the open source movement will be helped tremendously if this is happening across a wide open front.
-- Q
The Netscape name still means a lot to people. Slashdotters care about the codebase and feature set, not the branding (or rebranding, or re-rebranding). But there are still many, many users who will "upgrade Netscape" before they will "download and install Firefox", all due to the familiarity of the name and trust in the brand.
And "Mozilla" is a tougher sell yet.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Yes well we're not all flag-waving fanboys. From a practical point of view, anything that increases the popularity of Mozilla-based browsers is a good thing. The more people who use Mozilla (in whatever form), the more web developers who'll have to design their sites properly. All of this reduces the dominance of IE.
With a version 1.0 of Firefox do we now have the proof that the Gecko engine can be embedded in applications outside of the Mozilla suite.
Shouldn't it be more important to try and develop an embeddable browser (already done) and its supporting infrastructure (not as complete) - like documentation, languge bindings, etc, etc.
This is something that Gecko# has started in a way, but I'm sure a lot of projects (both open source and commercial) would benefit from being able to embed gecko.
In the Windows world, developers can just embed the IE browser using an ActiveX control. I'll bet that a lot of commercial developers would have no problem dropping the IE control in exchange for a Gecko control - less operating system (assuming one buys into the idea that IE is comingled with the OS) level dependancies.
With a well supported embedded component, Walmart could have their own browser.
[ Monday is a terrible way to spend one seventh of your life. ]
You can put lipstick on it and call it Gertrude, but in the end, a pig is still a pig.
That is, what I like about Firefox/Thunderbird is that they aren't "Netscape" per se. AOL is looking at Netscape's shortcomings and assuming that a simple substitution of the browser code with Firefox will gain support? Maybe for the unwashed masses who don't really care (and are probably using IE because it's there). If you told me it was "Netscape; powered by Firefox," that would not intice me to use Netscape.
I think what is not said is that MS probably plans the same thing for IE, albeit in some surrepticious manner. Maybe a rewrite to avoid any obvious license violation. But, I bet we'll notice that IE will start behaving a lot more like Firefox.
But, I wonder if Firefox will start having integration issues with Winders machines? It's been known to happen. MS sends out a critical security update, and Firefox will start having problems. Things break, din't they?
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Guess what? You are not the target audience. If you know about FireFox, sure why would you use their browser. Their audience is the millions of people the fork their service over to, who do not know any better.
AOL will add some proprietary plug-ins. Change the look and feel, add a new skin and you have the AOL/Netscape branded Fire Fox.
However there is a possible bright side to all of this. They may contribute to the project. They may find bugs that they want to fix, and they should have to contribute those fixes back to the community.
So even if you don't use their browser, depending on how they work this, it is a win-win for everyone involved.
Mid-Eastern Pennsylvania Gaming Convention
Yes exactly that. Bear in mind that the name Netscape still has tremendous recognition: Firms which would jib at the idea of installing "open-source" software might have fewer fears if the product was backed up with support from AOL.
Geeks like us will continue to use and recommend the "true" firefox but the Netscape browser may be able to win some people over who would otherwise have stuck with internet explorer
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Branding is important so I think that they should perhaps promote both project by naming it Netscpae Firefox.
I think the name "Netscape" actually carries negative currency. I know people who still harbor such residual hatred for Netscape 4 that the only reason they happily use Firefox now is because it doesn't say "Netscape" on it anywhere. And these people are developers!
where there's fish, there's cats
AOL bankrolled the Mozilla foundation for several years, and when they let them go, they donated some stuff and did the decent thing (IIRC). Netscape 6+ was based on the Mozilla suite. What's so strange/controversial about Netscape basing a browser on Firefox?
AOL is in the dumps, but it's still a large corporation with huge marketing muscle. Is it bad for Firefox if a Netscape browser based on it starts to show up in AOL marketing?!
Beyond brand cheering, the most important thing for the success of Firefox is that it (or branded versions of it) reach about 10% or so of websurfers; large enough to force sites (except slashdot!) to write compliant HTML, and small enough not to attract the majority of internet security attacks. AOL/Netscape's move can only help.
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
Why not just get firefox itself??!? The AOL-ized Netscape is just going to be a advertisement festival that I'd really rather just skip altogether.
Is AOL that delusioned, that they believe they will be able to provide any real value on top of what Firefox already brings? I imagine that they will repackage it and put it on all their mass-mailed CDs, which is a good thing overall if it gets people to use it, but who knows what spyware and adware AOL will strap onto this.
This is just another example that AOL/Netscape isn't actually going to innovate something; they just splash a new coat of paint and call it their own. That's why Netscape lost the browser wars. Thankfully its corpse was used to grow the seeds of Mozilla.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
People, even if you don't use it, it means the Mozilla engine now has more marketing muscle behind it. And the more the Mozilla engine is used--regardless of whether it's Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox, Camino--it's one less copy of IE in use!
And really, what's the big deal if people use Netscape instead of Firefox?
Netscape 4.x is much faster than ie, firefox or mozilla, except for deeply nested tables. It starts faster, loads faster, renders and scrolls faster and yes, it's a lot faster at crashing as well. It doesn't support css etc. but compared to any other so called 'modern' browser I've tried, it's lightning fast and has a tiny memory footprint.
Just because Firefox feels faster on your three point something GHz machine and Netscape 4.x didn't back in the days when you were still using a 486 or 100MHz pentium doesn't mean Netscape was slow.