Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Firefox-Based Netscape 8 Beta Goes Live

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the fox-eating-lizards dept.

pigmelon writes "According to BetaNews, 'America Online's Netscape team has opened its doors to the public, releasing the first beta of the revived Netscape Web browser. (screenshot) Based upon Firefox, Netscape version 8 focuses on security and user privacy, and supports rendering with both Mozilla's Gecko and Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser engines.' Before downloading the beta, remember that it uses Firefox 1.0, which contains some vulnerabilities."

6 of 320 comments (clear)

  1. Custom widgets by Koyaanisqatsi · · Score: 5, Insightful


    What's so wrong with using standart window captions, buttons and so on? There's a reason for that: consistency ammong applications.

    Leave themes and eye candy for the OS level, and obey it if present; but please, not a single application should implement it's own custom UI controls, that's just wrong.

  2. My eyes! The goggles do nothing! by Osty · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Holy crap! That has to be the worst browser interface I've ever seen. Awful color scheme, buttons everywhere, three different input bars (one for searching, one for addresses, and one for "shopping"?; worse, the most important bar, the address bar, is too small to show even the domain portion of a normal URL, and is not in a properly prominent position), funky menu positioning (by putting the menu in the title bar, I suppose you can no longer grab that part of the bar to drag the window), etc. Netscape really needs to invest in some competent UI designers ASAP.

  3. The goggles! They do nothing! by evn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just when you think the Internet can't get any uglier or more difficult to use we get another browser with piss-poor interface.

    Why the heck do I need the weather below my address bar?

    Why is the menu bar over by the close/minimize/maximize widgets (don't miss click the help menu or your window will vanish to the task bar)?

    I /love/ the way they use completley non-standard UI elements throughout and the grace us with the standard windows scroll bar on the right.

    I think i'll leave my family/neighbors/girlfriend with Firefox or Mozilla thank-you. They may not be the perfect interface but they're an order of magnitude more useful than this monstrosity.

    And no, it doesn't run on Mac OS X, Linux, BSD, or anything but Windows. I guess that's a good thing in this case.

  4. brand recognition by commodoresloat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One of the higherups where I work sent an email a couple months ago out complaining about this or that vulnerability in IE. He finished the email with "I guess that's just one more reason I should be using Netscape." Not Mozilla, not Firefox, but Netscape. Switching to Netscape is something I told him to do. In 1995. Ten years later, not only hasn't he switched yet, but he still thinks the only choice is between IE and Nutscrape. I don't think most computer users pay that much attention to new software (though Firefox and Mozilla are hardly new) nor to the technical aspects of software (the claim that Firefox and Netscape are both based on Mozilla will be met with a blank stare, followed by, "so I should use Netscape, and I'll be secure, right?" (and then followed by continued use of IE, because finding and downloading a new browser is still too much to deal with).

  5. don't look a gift-horse in the mouth by aendeuryu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Netscape's name-brand recognition among the great uneducated masses of Internet users might actually convince millions of otherwise-competent people to use this abomination.

    The old Netscape might have been junk. This new Netscape might also be junk. But who the heck cares? You don't need to like the smell of manure to appreciate roses at the flower shop.

    Netscape's decision once upon a time to release the source code gave us an excellent browser. The license for that browser is such that anybody can take it and release their own abomination, so if Netscape itself wants to do that, more power to them.

  6. Return on investment by nobodyman · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Okay, agreed -- the UI is pretty over-the-top. I won't even argue that.

    However, I think that the general attitude on ./ is that Netscape has somehow "wronged" the Firefox team and the Firefox community by releasing this product, or that they don't "deserve" to rebrand firefox in such a way. I probably wont use it (the GUI hurts), but I don't have a problem with Netscape/AOL releasing it, considering:
    Netscape not only opened the source code, they also provided manpower, hardware , and cash. AOL was the single largest donor to the Mozilla foundation (2 million cash, but also assets such as webservers and bandwidth). Without Netscape and AOL, Firefox would not exist.

    Netscape is abiding by the mozilla public license, right? If so, what's the problem? Why do so many open source zealots villify large corporations for engaging in behaviour that is expressly condoned (even encouraged)?

    Though standards zealots will disagree, at least some people will like the dual rendering engine feature. So it's not like they didn't bring anything to the table and shamelessly replaced all the firefox logos with netscape logos.

    Isn't this really an open source success story? "If you open the source code to your product, other developers will extend it and improve it in ways that you couldn't dream of (let alone afford), and you will be free to incorporate these improvements back into your product!". Isn't this the return on investment that the OSS community talks about?
    Netscape's name-brand recognition among the great uneducated masses of Internet users might actually convince millions of otherwise-competent people to use this abomination.

    If we're talking about the same uneducated mass of Internet users that were convinced to use IE because of Microsoft's brand recognition, isn't that a good thing?