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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."
There are screenshots and comments over at Planet Mozilla.
The prototype's development was outsourced to Mercurial Communications and includes...
That's the perfect name for a company hired to knock-off the Firefox browser:
Mercurial:
Having the characteristics of eloquence, shrewdness, swiftness, and thievishness attributed to the god Mercury.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
In Korea, only the old use ActiveX controls.
hahahahhahaha.
worst. slashdot. cliche. evar.
...they are beta testing a new IE based browser.
Surely including an IE rendering engine negates one of the biggest advantages of moving to Firefox: fewer security exploits.
Will this get incorperated into the FF code?
...yup...
That's like saying: it's got the ability to piss it's pants when it lacks a toilet!
Where's my free iPod!? Until then, I'll settle for a kiss...
Downloading much faster via the Coral Cache Link, so I thought I'd post it.
Henrik Gemal has screenshots here
Struggling to find a day everyone can make? WhenShallWe.com
Morpheus: Microsoft is our enemy, Firefox, but when you're on the internet, you look around. What do you see? Business men, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still IE users. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to switch to a browser that doesn't come included on their desktop when they bring their computers home from Best Buy and pop in the "2000 Free Hours!" AOL CD. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on Microsoft that they will fight to protect it. Were you listening to me Firefox, or were you looking at the woman surfing the hot lesbo porn?
Firefox: I was...
Morpheus: Look again.
Woman has turned into Bill Gates, introducing new "standard" to break non-IE browsers.
Morpheus: Freeze it!
Firefox: What is it?
Morpheus: IE-only standards. That means that anyone we haven't converted over is potential audience for crappy sites who only QA against IE. On the internet, you see this everywhere. We have survived by being standards-based, by working to be compatible. But these false "standards" are the gatekeepers.
Firefox: Whoa.
Morpheus: I won't lie to you, Firefox. Every single company or product that has stood their ground, everyone who was fought Microsoft has been crushed or aquired. But where they have failed, you will succeed.
Firefox: Why?
Morpheus: I saw Microsoft crush Netscape's market share. Men have come up with fantastic innovations only to find them incompatible or MS copies already included in the next version of Windows. Yet their programs are still based on factory-style programming and decisions made by pointy-hairs. Because of that, they will never be as secure or as functional as you can be.
Firefox: What are you trying to tell me, that I can block pop-ups?
Morpheus: I'm trying to tell you that when you're ready, you won't have to.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
How is it that Firefox can support ActiveX plugins? My thought was that not supporting ActiveX was a feature of Firefox. Besides, what's the point in supporting IE rendering, when Mozilla's is more robust and compliant to current standards?
idm owns me
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.
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.
That is without exception, the dumbest thing I've ever heard of.
Let's take Firefox - known for it's security - and have you enable ActiveX, the mack-daddy of all virus vectors. And then for an encore, have it run the mother-of-all virus vectors, IE - inside it!
What do you do for an encore? Take a shower with your toaster???
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
"A source close to the company said AOL opted to include IE engine support in order to offer users more choice, as some sites are optimized for certain browsers. But to avoid security vulnerabilities found in IE, Netscape "gives the user the choice through Site Controls of what sites they trust and don't trust by allowing them to turn off Web functionalities that expose security holes on a per site basis," " Does this mean that while the IE engine is running it will be just as open to IE attacks? Or that people will have the ability to use built in IE features, or are those seperate to the IE engine...
TruePunk | Games
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%.
For the non geek, there are only two web browsers, Microsoft and Netscape. One comes with Windows and is easy... the other has grown to suck more and more over the years. No matter how good Firefox, Opera or any others may be, they don't have the name recognition that Netscape still has.
I would expect that a major Netscape release like this with a Firefox backend will do a lot to draw the non tech folks who continue to use IE because they think it is their only option.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
"ability to switch to the IE engine"..
or how to ruin the efforts of a community to develop a more secure browsing platform with only one mouse click.
They should have concentrated on developing many extensions for the thing.
Stuff like aim chat extension, save bookmarks, listen to netscape radio (i.e a a small taskbar control). I can think of way too many things before even considering running IE in Firefox.
Why didn't they instead spend the $$$ improving rendering in FireFox so that all these IE only sites render properly?
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity
I always liked Netscape and all but please can they just die already. They lost the browser war. They were bought, kept on life support, allowed to die, resurrected, killed off again. Now they are back? I have never seen such amounts of money and effort put into something that they are just going to give away for free anyways. (oh wait I have but at least linux and freebsd has a market)
Oh well its a good way for AOL to hasten its own demise by burning more money on bad investments. If they charged one dollar a year for a not-shitty version of AIM they would probably get 500 million easy.
Many ask why aol/netscape bother with maintaining a browser. Perhaps the answer can be found by looking at AOL as a whole rather than just at the browsers themselves.
Sure, this version of Netscape will probably go the way of others. It will also create, for a short while at least, greater diversity in the browser arena. This would, it seems, tend to force all browsers toward a unified standard of interoperability.
AOL does not sell browsers, it sells content. If unified standards are used, it is better able to deliver that content. With a diverse browser environment, AOL also stands a better chance of not being "shut out" when a single, dominant, browser is "innovated" such that it can no longer reach AOL services. (Not that Microsoft would ever do that sort of thing.)
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Who thought this skin looked good? I mean, sure, Netscape is understaffed and all (being nothing more than a name), but you'd think that AOL could afford a UI designer that wasn't blind!
Folks, this is why skinning an application is bad. For every attractive skin that gets published (and those really are few and far between), there's thousands of craptacular skins just like this that people think look good. Excuse me while I go poke out my eyes. I just can't take the seafoam green any more ...
Woohoo, that is the deal clincher. Sign me up for AOL today.
I can't believe it. Netscape struggled against M$ for years and lost then did the right thing giving birth to the Mozilla foundation, or at least nurturing it. Mozilla foundation produces the first high quality, standards-compliant competitors to M$ and what do Netscape do? Hack it so that it behaves more like IE.
This is MADNESS. Then again, who gives a toss about Netscape anyway?
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!
I don't understand... why would I want to be able to switch to an automated virus downloader?
... and in the DRM, bind them.
Help / About Netscape Browser, then click on the "Credits" button. Hmmm, a whole load of names missing there.
if users know it's based on Firefox. How many users will bother to only toggle into IE mode to get at certain sites? They'll just leave it in IE mode all the time (or not even be aware it's a special mode), get crap-full of viruses, and assume Firefox is no more secure than IE. If they only know it as Netscape they'll assume Netscape is as bad as IE, and they'll be less likely to believe hype about non-IE browsers as more secure. The only hope is if they don't associate Netscape and Firefox and just assume it's Netscape being as crap as it used to.
Probably the same spyware related crap (Weatherbug, Viewpoint 'Media Player') as AOL instant messenger does...
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.
Anyone thought about it? Tinfoil hats on, it would explain why such a bizarr move was pulled in the first place.
1. Take the firefox build of one of the worst milestones possible.
2. Allow it to use the IE Rendering Engine
3. When it breaks, runs slow, has the same bugs as IE, blame it on the firefox base code.
4. The users of the new netscape browser will think that firefox (that browser everyone keeps talking about) is just as bad as IE.
5. IE users stay IE users, even netscape users because now they don't feel there is any reason to use firefox if it breaks all the time.
6. ????
7. Profit!!!
"We're breaking out the ramen noodles. . . "
"Really? Is it someone's birthday?"
Ok, so...
Netscape is making a browser based on Firefox, Mozilla's browser that is based on it's bigger Mozilla browser which is based on Netscape's old browser.
My head asplode:/
Is it Free Software/Open Source? I thought Mozila used a copyleft license, so shouldn't it be?
Screen Shot"
... perfect awfulness. If a skilled and pissed-off user interface designer sat down to purposely design something as user-hostile as possible, I don't think he'd come up with something this bad.
That is undoubtedly one of the worst UI disasters I've ever seen. Just looking at it makes my eyes hurt. The horrible choice in colors, the business, the unreadability of text due to gradients and poor color and font choices, and that's just looking at a static image. From the looks of it, I wouldn't be surprised if half the widgets were animated.
It's like
Ye gods.
. . . is that the lame IT guys at my school might finally replace the Netscape 6.x on all the machines with something a little closer to Firefox.
all the benefits of firefox, and the biggest downfall of IE!
AOL couldn't of made a better decision on this one.
No wonder why it's #1!
Runnin' On Empty
but the Moz/FF stronghold is geeks, we need to get it on non-geek platforms. I've told my dad, my friends, everyone to switch to FF, but I always say "if you have problems on such and such a site go back to IE for that one alone". not being able to use the site which is your bank, or do your weekly competition with the Times (this is my Dad) is not acceptable to the end user. Get them on FF as much as possible, but if its all or nothing with them, you'll prob get nothing.
For this reason I do broadly support the IE switching option, providing its like a button "Switch To IE" that would always render that (page/domain) in IE. Similar to the way "Allow Poppups works. This would solve the major problem of "I use IE because I often visit XYZ and FF doesn't support it".
Saying that a universal "Switch to IE rendering" option is going to be more damaging than helpful to FF.
Didn't this kinda go around in a sort of weird Karma circle?
The new Netscape, based on Firefox...which itself is based on Mozilla...which is the off-shoot of Netscape.
Wow...just blew out me mind...
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
In principle, this is not a bad thing, and can even be helpful.
Some brain-damaged sites don't render well in Mozilla/FF natively, but do render in the IE engine. This is particularly true in corporate environments.
Three things are needed for this to be a big win:
1) no obvious way to make this the default (i.e. it is on a per-page or per-site basis, but all new sites open in the FF engine)
2) administrators can lock it out completely, or preset it for certain intranet pages and lock out new pages.
3) there are no bugs by which a third party can "trick" the machine into using the IE engine
4) the plugin is in a sandbox, so IE security holes don't escape to affect the rest of FF or the rest of the system.
Oops, #4 will be darned hard to do due to the nature of Active X. Oh well, nice try.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
All I did was install Firefox on every computer in my office, set it as the default browser, and removed the IE icon from anywhere possible.
Finally, I renamed the little foxy world thingy to 'Internet Explorer' and voila - everyone migrated. Guess how many people noticed?
Any incompatibilities come with very few sites that IMO most people don't use anyway. The people, that would understand what was wrong would know how to launch IE as a backup.
And if you're worried about brand dilution because someone's using your code, open source is not right for you.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
I know a lot of people hate the idea of an ActiveX plugin for IE rendering. But, I think it is a good move that will allow more options for companies to adopt Firefox as their standard brower. Many organizations are locked into IE because of internally developed applications that use IE-specific technology. Without this option, there is NO upgrade path. Period.
However, I'm actually very interested in the opposite scenario. I work for a company that distributes a web-based application, and we are very interested in using XUL to create a richer UI experience. XUL, however, is only available in Gecko. I've searched everywhere, but cannot find an IE plugin that allows for the Gecko rendering engine to be used (or the subset of functionality required to render XUL components).
There is no way we could require users to use Firefox (we're not going to limit our customer base no matter how cool the technology), but if a plugin existed for IE that we could distribute, we would happily go down this path.
I would think that this would be in the Firefox group's best interest anyways to establish XUL as a de facto standard. Could anyone comment on this?
In WinXP - why, when you click anywhere in the browser that's not a text box, do you get a blinking cursor? And, how do you turn it off? In W2K/98x this doesn't happen at all, but in XP it really ticks me off. I can't get rid of it or find it in the about:config area.
Any tips?
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
It appears more and more that AOL is hell bent on destroying every aspect of Netscape.
The single biggest advantage of non-IE browsers is that they don't use the IE rendering engine (activeX, jpeg exploits, (d)com exploits, etc all boil down to this).
This version of Netscape is DOA. To compound the problems web developers face, this browser probably doesn't alter its UA string as part of the engine swap.
Way to go, AOL. You should buy SCO and begin gathering all the stupid IT companies under one corporate umbrella.
I've put up a screenshot, with notes on Flickr. Bash away.
The whole for going to Firefox (or Netscape) is absolutely NOT for safer browsing. "Safer browsing" has been around for years, but nobody has cared about alternative browsers recently until Firefox. This was thanks to the features and design of Firefox, not the rendering engine. Most people really don't care about very much about whether they're using the most secure browser. It's much more valuable to have a browser that works. That's been important to Firefox's success - the ability to view most webpages normally, just like IE. Firefox clearly far outshines the new Netscape with the user interface, but the IE rendering option is absolutely a plus. The security risks are only ones that the user takes upon themselves. And there's clearly a demand for viewing webpages with the IE engine that were looked at in Firefox - the "IE View" extension is one of the most popular. In order to beat IE, Firefox needs to be able to beat it on every count. The optional IE rendering engine eliminates the one good reason stick with IE. I hope this feature from Netscape is incorporated back into Firefox, at least as an optional extension. It would make an astronomical difference in the browser wars.
Netscape used to be Mosiac Communications and their URL used to be:
www.mcom.com
Mercurial Communications developed the new browser and their URL is:
www.mcomi.com
Coincidence? You decide.
ActiveX for Mozilla (Seamonkey and Firefox). Is it any good? I haven't tried it.
WE DON'T NEED NO BLOG CONTROL.