AOL Releases Netscape Beta, Based on Firefox

An anonymous reader writes "Netscape has released their new prototype browser for Windows based on Firefox 0.9.3. The prototype's development was outsourced to Mercurial Communications and includes several Netscape specific extensions. The biggest difference from Firefox, however, is the ability to switch to the Internet Explorer rendering engine from within the browser using an IE ActiveX control. The browser is currently available for a limited download."

Comments

Also

[Anonymous Coward]

There are screenshots and comments over at Planet Mozilla.

Re:Also

[RevAaron]

Why in the sam hill would I want to 'switch to internet explorer rendering'?

These days it is very rare that I'd need to view a page in IE, but it happens once in a while for me. For that, I use an extension for FF that lets me right click and say "open in IE." *shrug* Some folks may run into this problem more, and if this is done well, you could just pop into IE and view that page, then move on, keeping your tabs in the same window, etc.

Re:Also

[Rick the Red]

Why would anyone download a browser to browse in IE?

AOL's browser (the one that comes on all those CDs) is based on IE. This is probably the first step in migrating it from IE to Netscape. Why else did AOL buy Netscape?

Also, I use Avant, which is based on IE, because it offers features not found elsewhere (such as movable tabs, multiple rows of tabs, and remembering your open tabs when you close it, features Firefox lacks).

Re:Also

[Anonymous Coward]

Just install the Tab Browser Extension for Firefox. It supports moveable tabs, saving tabs when you close, multiple rows of tabs, etc. Firefox lacks them because not everyone wants them, and they're available with a simple extension download for those that do.

Re:Also

[tvadakia]

Try the Tabbrowser Extensions (http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/_tabextensions.html. en) extension for Firefox. Beats anything even Avant can fassion. Enjoy IE free browsing.

Re:Also

[rabbit994]

You can disable the grouping in Taskbar by right clicking on it and clicking properties and uncheck Group Similar Applications and hit apply. Your right, I hate it too.

Re:Also

[pfunkmallone]

prefbar for moz/ff might let you spoof the UA to fool the application into letting you use it. try here: http://prefbar.mozdev.org

It's sad that web developers stoop to that though..

Re:Also

[Atzanteol]

http://www.pryan.org/mozilla/site/TheOneKEA/tabpre fs/

Re:Also

[.com b4 .storm]

The downside of Tabbrowser is that it slows Firefox down like crazy. I've seen many complaints about this, and it was extremely bad here on my Mac (Dual 1ghz). Firefox normally ran very chipper, but as soon as I installed Tabbrowser, it slogged things down so much that it took 1-2 seconds just to open a new, blank tab in a window. Not to mention adding about 10-15 seconds to the startup time of Firefox, and slowing down everything else the browser did.

I don't know if it's a flaw in Firefox, its extension model, or Tabbrowser itself. I suspect it's the later. At any rate, it was serious enough that I uninstalled the extension about 10 minutes after installing it. All the cool features it has are not worth that kind of a performance hit, and it just shouldn't happen on a fast machine.

Just a heads up for people that decide to try it, especially on slower machines where Firefox's lighter overhead is usually a big reason for using it.

Yet at the same time...

[the_mighty_$]

...they are beta testing a new IE based browser.

Coral Cache of Beta Download

[BobPaul]

Downloading much faster via the Coral Cache Link, so I thought I'd post it.

Screenshots

[levell]

Henrik Gemal has screenshots here

Boy, I hope they let me choose my own themes.

[Japong]

Ugly.

It's like a horrid mixture of OSX and windows olive-green theme gone horribly wrong... The upper bars look cramped and the top right portion is a mess of buttons and widgets.

Re:IE renduring engine feature

[Simon (S2)]

No. It's an ActiveX that works only on Windows, so it's not multi platform and can not be included in the base FF code.

Netscape is ruining the purpose of FireFox.

[garcia]

I always thought that Firefox was meant to streamline the webbrowsing experience? The first thing that I noticed when installing the browser is that it asked for my zipcode for weather reports. Ugh, no thanks, 90210 here I come. It also asks for a reboot after install. For what? What do I need to reboot after an install of a webbrowser for? What are they installing?

It defaults to ONE ugly screen with a tab opened, a headlines ticker going, a "money" ticker going, and the menu bar on the opposite side of the window than I am used to. There's a "new tab" option on the left side of the browsing area instead of leaving the main tab open there. You think new users are going to like this? I don't.

At least I don't see any AOL icons installed to my desktop or my favorites (yet). They might come after a restart though.

It's nice to see the backing of AOL/Netscape on Firefox. People might recognize those two names before Firefox and they might switch. Especially if it can render the IE-only pages 100%.

Windows Update

[prandal]

In the new Netscape Browser, select the option to render in Netscape mode, and then type windowsupdate.microsoft.com in the url barl. Lo, Windows Update appears and works!

IE Extension

[Anonymous Coward]

For those that might not know, firefox has an ie extension available for download. It allows you to open the current page in IE. Why may you ask??? Because there are the occasional pages that just don't look right in firefox. Plus, it's a handy tool for designers who are interested to see how there page looks in the two browsers.

Re:Perfect Name for a Ripoff Artist

[jacksonj04]

Can you link to the Google branded Firefox? All I've seen is a Firefox branded Google, which is different entirely.

Re:Perfect Name for a Ripoff Artist

[Jugalator]

They did support the Mozilla development environment for a good many years for like 0 profit

Actually did far more than that...

They donated $2 million to the Mozilla Foundation to get them going and willingly donated the mozilla.org domain name, the Mozilla-related trademarks, and related equipment such as the mozilla.org servers, to Mozilla Foundation. They was obliged to do none of this, just having purchased Netscape and got all this along with them.

See also this story.

Re:ActiveX?

[dominator]

While this may not be exactly the same thing AOL is using, it's interesting and topical nonetheless:

Mozilla ActiveX Project
Mozilla ActiveX Control

Like it or not, a lot of corporations have at least 1 browser-based ActiveX control that their employees must use. Allowing Mozilla to run these programs would eliminate a major barrier to entry.

The point in supporting IE rendering is that a large number of pages just don't work with Mozilla or refuse to render "correctly". For this reason, some browsers strive for bug-for-bug compatibility with MSIE.

Of course, that isn't to say that these are necessarily good or bad decisions, or that there aren't better solutions out there. Just that it's easy to understand these decisions and the motivations behind them even if you don't necessarily agree with them.

Re:ActiveX?

[Anonymous Coward]

The point in supporting IE rendering is that a large number of pages just don't work with Mozilla or refuse to render "correctly". For this reason, some browsers strive for bug-for-bug compatibility with MSIE.

They don't strive for bug-for-bug compatibility with IE. They design a flashy UI and link the browser functions to mshtml*.dll so that they won't have to do any real work themselves.

Better Screenshots

[BenFranske]

There are better screenshots at:
http://gemal.dk.nyud.net:8090/misc/nsb02.png
http://gemal.dk.nyud.net:8090/misc/nsb05.png
http://gemal.dk.nyud.net:8090/misc/nsb06.png
http://gemal.dk.nyud.net:8090/misc/nsb14.png
http://gemal.dk.nyud.net:8090/misc/nsb15.png

Screenshot, with notes

[Devil]

I've put up a screenshot, with notes on Flickr. Bash away.