Firefox-Based Netscape 8 Beta Goes Live

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."

Comments

Merged Menu Bar

[fembots]

One thing caught my eyes is the merged top menu bars, so the page title and file menu options are on the same line now.

Is there such plug-in for FireFox?

why?

[mohrt]

What is the advantage of a separate browser? Why not make an AOL theme for firefox, drape it with AOL extentions/plugins and just use firefox?

Re:why?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

What is the advantage of a separate browser? Why not make an AOL theme for firefox, drape it with AOL extentions/plugins and just use firefox?

Supposedly the netscape version has built in the IE rendering engine for compatibility, while still maintaining the security of Firefox. We shall see. This may mean a browser that is vulnerable to every exploit. If done properly, however, it could be a very nice feature.

Who cares?

[tevenson]

Someone please explain to me why, if you knew of the existance of Firefox 1.0 (or 1.0.1 now), you would still choose to download a bastardized version of it from Netscape?

Let's be honest. You're going to get the same rendering engine (at least for the most part, probably with more problems though) but with a bloated skin, no theme support, no extension support, and the Netscape icon.

I think it's totally worth it, ha.

And so it comes full circle.

[Caspian]

1) Netscape releases source to Netscape browser, which by that point really sucks.
2) This source spawns Mozilla, which becomes pretty good.
3) This source spawns Firefox, which becomes even better (and actually popular)
4) Firefox gets used as the basis for a new Netscape browser, which (if the screenshot is any indication) really sucks...

There is no "5) Profit!".

The sad thing is that a lot-- and I mean a lot-- of users (particularly Windows-only folks, which is still 90+% of the population) think that the only two browsers out there are IE and Netscape. When I say "I don't use IE", I sometimes get a response like "So you use Netscape?"

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.

Re:Does it fix the shyte rendering of slasdot?

[erikdalen]

the problem is a bug in firefox. it not caused by slashdots fucked up html code. you can get the same display bug on a fully valid html document. they have examples in the bugzilla. and it's already fixed in cvs.