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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?"
Wow. I had no idea that there were still "Netscape" browsers being made today. That's cute.
I don't respond to AC's.
Firstly, that's some quality writing. Secondly, the only thing I see Netscape 9 enhancing is the memory usage. Holy crap, people call Firefox a memory hog. Are they planning on including a discount on a 1GB DIMM with every download?
I gave up on Netscape after 4.72. I recommend the tag 'clusterfuck'.
I mean, let's be honest here. We have Firefox and Opera, plus Safari if you're a Mac user. Netscape is irrelevant.
It would take something truly remarkable for this to have any impact, with Netscape's repeated failed starts over the last few years I can't see many people being willing to give them much of a go.
Not all conservatives are stupid,
but it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
- Hume
He didn't say Firefox was the most used browser, he said it was "more used" than Netscape.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Of course there is! Where have you been? You probably didn't notice that there is an Amiga OS/4 either, a 2008 Fortran standard, or a late 2005 release of the TinyCOBOL compiler. I'm sure a revised Gopher client is in the works, along with some juicy updates for our favorite C64 BBS program, Color64. It's great to live in the past!
Your stats could easily be influenced by the type of sites you run. For example I'm sure that slashdot.org has a higher proportion of people reading it with Firefox than microsoft.com does.
Not all conservatives are stupid,
but it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
- Hume
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.
Is it taken seriously?
V8.12 comes with "WeatherBug" among other things. I don't know if it's a full version of Weatherbug or the spyware infected version, but i'm willing to guess it's the spyware infected version.
How seriously would you take software bundled with "WeatherBug".
The last version I ran was probally V6.xx, which was AIM infected.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
I remember Netscape like it was yesterday. *** assumes the foetal position, in a dark corner. ****
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 don't think 3.0 had Flashblock, NoScript, nor AdBlock. Tabs are kickass. CSS2? mathML? SVG? Methinks that if Netscape 3 had all the features you want, you don't want much. At least not the things I need.
In a word... NO.
Netscape ceased existence with the last vestiges of the 4.79(?) version; as long as AOL controls it, it will be filled with automatically installed spyware/adware and AOL cruft.
Unlike the Mozilla Suite Releases the AOL releases not only added crapware, they could barely get fixes out. Nutscrape is dead, long live Mozilla.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
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
Oh, man, that'd be awesome! If they could just add JavaScript to Gopher, it'd be perfect! And image support. And Flash. Yeah, that's all Gopher really needs to succeed. But that would be a pretty l33t Gopher, so we should probably spell it g0ph3r to save confusion. Either that or Bruce (since Archie and Veronica are already taken).
Actually, C*Base is the preferred flavor nowadays, and 3.3 was just released:
C*Base 3.3
You gotta move with the times, man.
READY.
#
the disastrous decision to include the Internet Explorer rendering engine as an alternative to Gecko
Uhm, what disasters were caused by having an _alternate_ rendering engine which most people would not know how or why to use?
To me it seems Netscape has lost his reputation as best browser.
Wow. Welcome to 1999.
meh