Slashdot Mirror
Netscape 9 to Undo Netscape 8 Mistakes?
An anonymous reader writes "MozillaZine reports that Netscape 9 has been announced. The most interesting thing is how they seem to be re-evaluating many of the decisions they made with Netscape 8. Netscape 9 will be developed in-house (Netscape 8 was outsourced) and it will be available for Windows, OSX, and Linux (Netscape 8 was Windows only). Although Netscape 9 will be a standalone browser, the company is also considering resuming support for Netscape 7.2, the last suite version with an email client and Web page editor. It remains to be seen whether Netscape will reverse the disastrous decision to include the Internet Explorer rendering engine as an alternative to Gecko but given that there's no IE for OS X or Linux, here's hoping. After a series of substandard releases, could Netscape be on the verge of making of a version of their browser that enhances the awesomeness of Firefox, rather than distracts from it?"
To me it seems Netscape has lost his reputation as best browser. Mozilla Firefox is the more used browser these days. For Netscape it is very hard to gain market share with a suit. Still brave of Netscape though.
Just my 2 cents.
Daxy's Networking Blog
Back in the netscape 4 days, some months after the source release, I remember a coworker having just heard of this new "gecko" rendering engine, and coming excitedly to my desk to show me how amazing it was. He pointed me to where to grab the nearly-naked engine, and then told me to render the same page in it and in my existing netscape window, and marvel at how much faster gecko was.
I opened up some moderately complex page in gecko, and it seemed kind of normal-ish to me. I opened up the same page in a new netscape window, and it was perceptibly faster. He was confused for a moment. "It was way, way faster than netscape on my machine..."
I tried the comparison again with a few other pages, with similar results. Finally he notices something: "Hey, what version of netscape are you running here?"
"3.04," I said. "4 is just a lot slower and crashier than 3, without adding anything worthwhile."
"...oh," he said, disappointed. He had just figured out that this magical open-source revamping of the netscape 4 source had managed to produce something that was... nearly back to as good as netscape 3.
Sadly, I think this situation persists through today. The whole family tree of netscape/gecko browsers seems to have only continued to get worse since 1998, adding nothing that I find desirable, and removing more and more performance and stability.
The only reason to keep Netscape alive is brand recognition. Look at how many websites are still "best viewed"/"tested" or have bookmark or printing directions for only Netscape and IE, or just haven't been updated to say anything different: NOAA, part of NASA, NIH sites, govts of Utah and Minnesota, the IOC, a Consumer Reports site and college after college after college. If people keep seeing these notices, especially on government sites, there's no way they'll switch to some "other" browser, and keeping Netscape as a brand will be worthwhile. I mean, do I really have to mention AOL?
"It remains to be seen whether Netscape will reverse the disastrous decision to include the Internet Explorer rendering engine as an alternative to Gecko"
Hold on... what exactly whas so disastrous about that? If I'm not mistaken, you got the choice of using either the Gecko or the IE rendering engine. What exactly is so disastrous about that? I thought we were supposed to be all -for- choice?
"a version of their browser that enhances the awesomeness of Firefox, rather than distracts from it?"
I'm not sure if the poster really meant "distracts" there.. it is quite apt, given what a gizmo-ridden POS Netscape is these days.. but I suspect they meant "detract".
I'm not sure why the cryptic title was chosen, of course Netscape 9 will be better than Netscape 8. *smile* The new browser will be integrated with our social news system that has been live on Netscape.com since July 2006, and yes, the browser will run on Linux (as well as Windows and Mac).
I am one of the Anchors on Netscape http://www.netscape.com/about, and not directly part of the dev team, but I am sure members of our dev team will have plenty to comment on this thread once they are awake.
Fabienne Serriere
Netscape Anchor
I think many people get excited about Netscape news because many of us want them to win a battle they lost a decade ago.
I was lulled into Internet Explorer from the start, because that's what my ISP's software shipped with, and at the time, the browser and the ISP software were synonymous to me. I didn't have any technical knowledge, my girlfriend had to explain to me how to open an .mp3 file. If my computer didn't natively handle a format, end of story.
Anyway, I digress. A lot of us have fond memories of Netscape, including myself. I remember when I switched to using "Netscape.net" email, and the Netscape web browser. It was an exciting time for me, because I felt like I had a choice in the software I used to view the web. Even though my choices are greater still (Firefox, Mozilla, Safari, Kameleon, etc., my perception was different. The nostalgic feeling of discovering there was another option felt so much more important at the time. Now, I can switch between browsers and Operating Systems easily, but back then, Netscape represented a diversity that scarcely existed.
In 1995, Widows and "internet" were synonyms to me. It was only in discovering Netscape that the idea of modularity even occurred to me. That I could view the internet in a different way but still have the same computer.
Netscape has made no small number of mistakes over the years, but all that is forgivable because of the moment of clarity they afforded me. Will the next version of Netscape be a technical rival to IE or Firefox? Maybe not, but I'll try it anyway. Benefit of the doubt and all that.
Browsers are getting worse, not better.
I love the privacy and security features in FF 1.5, where you can easily disable images or cookies from external servers, without having to manually edit the config file. Those options are missing in FF 2.0.
Mozilla and Microsoft are "borrowing" more features from each other's browsers, which means that, instead of having two individual browsers, FF is becoming shockingly similar to IE, with the only significant advantage of FF being the lack of OS integration.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
NS7.2 is extremely servicable is very stable and works well. NS8 - the dumb choice they made to end the mail client just stupid.
But - FF/Thunderbird REALLY DO have their own problems.
a) Lots of bloat & overhead for both. FF/Thunderbird work ok but are sluggish. The fast launch STILL doesn't work right, combining it with the Google accelerator is even worse.
b) STILL has compatibility problems with many websites. Ergo the IE Tab extension which is an absolute necessity.
So - Seamonkey is a good middle ground. It works more or less ok, has a lower overhead than FF/Thunderbird, works like NS7.2 but allows for extensions. Now there are still lots of warts with Seamonkey but it's good enough for now.
NS8 should be bypassed as it really doesn't bring anything to the table. It's bloated and slow, doesn't have a mail client. Maybe NS9 will do........what? Exactly? Be a lot like FF? A lot like Seamonkey? I don't know.