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First Peek at Netscape Navigator 9
lisah writes "Netscape released a beta version of Navigator 9 (Linux.com shares corporate overlordship with Slashdot) today that includes several new components while giving some old ones the boot. This release will no longer ship with mail or composer but does have URL correction, a pre-populated RSS feed menu, and a neat clipboard in the browser's sidebar that will hold links to websites you want to visit again but not necessarily bookmark."
Oh like I really need one more browser to worry about when I'm making a webpage. I already have to write most of the scripts twice for IE and Firefox! I hope nobody uses it :(
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
"For those who remember the Netscape Navigator suite, it's lost a little weight -- Navigator no longer includes mail or HTML composer components, just a souped-up Firefox build with a number of features that integrate with the Netscape.com portal."
I'm glad to hear it's been slimmed down, but really, is integration with the Netscape.com portal a big feature?
I agree. Not since the 4.X's have I used or even heard of Netscape from anywhere or anyone. Had a short stint with only IE and Opera and now I'm fully Firefox. I never really even questioned where Netscape went, it just disappeared and I got Firefox and life was good. Thanks Firefox your tabs make browsing fun.
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It doesn't depend on IE, it can use the IE rendering engine if it's incapable of rendering a page by itself...
Also how could something which is available for linux depend on IE?
No wait. Make that I wouldn't want vi to come back from the grave.
Netscape 4.x is what killed Netscape. Maybe the early 4.0 versions were acceptable, I really can't remember, but by around 4.5 it was a bloated, slow, buggy browser. Netscape 4.x is what made Internet Explorer popular. IE 5 was a breath of fresh air compared with Netscape 4. (Personally, I think that IE 4 was also many times better than NS 4, but that's a different argument. It's really unarguable that IE 5 was superior, though.)
Now some people might cry out that IE is a security nightmare and that no one should choose it over Netscape for that reason, but NS 4 was also a security nightmare. It was, simply, a worse browser than IE 5. It was in the NS 4 days that I switched to IE, and it was because IE was simply a better browser.
Netscape died in the 4.x days, when the browser became a large, slow, and bloated piece of crap. Compared with Netscape 4, IE was a fast, light, agile browser with many more features and provided a much better experience. As someone writing webapps around the Netscape 4.5/IE 5 days, I can say that IE provided a much nicer platform to write webapps for.
That changed around the release of Mozilla 1.0; but around the time of Netscape 4.5, IE was simply the better browser while Netscape was simply no longer improving their browser.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Would I ever use Netscape over Firefox or Camino? Probably not. Does it seem like some queer throwback to days gone by? Yes. Does it, on some level, seem kind of pathetic in the same way when A Flock of Seagulls shows up at some local bar/theater for a concert? Yes.
But I quickly realize that, as a web developer I can only stand behind them and cheer them on as a great alternative to IE. There's nothing wrong with another standards-compliant, Gecko-based browser on the market.
I just realized the irony that there is a Gecko broswer called Flock.
How many people actually have commented on this article already without actually downloading and trying the product?
Let's all give it a good shot first before making some quick judgments. Sure it may just be a branded Firefox, but it also may have some great uses. Maybe this is a browser that may be the recommended browser for your aunts and uncles when they get a new system? Who knows.. Let's at least give it a shot before shooting it and leaving it for dead.
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You've forgotten the Netscape 4.x disaster haven't you? The last several versions of Netscape were horrible, horrible things. Netscape squandered most of the goodwill they had by that series of trainwreck releases.
TODO: Something witty here...
Though I agree that Netscape 4.x was bad in all the ways you say - the major reason IE became popular was because it was installed on most people's desktops as an icon called "The Internet".
Why? I'm glad you asked. For all the varying levels of standards compliance, they're at least converging, so that targeting standards, then tweaking for quirks, has a better chance of succeeding across browsers than targeting the browsers to begin with. On the other hand, security vulnerabilities (other than misuse of intentional functionality, like the IDN spoofing attacks a while back) tend to be specific to an engine+platform combination.
If we've got two major IE versions, Gecko, Opera and Safari, and if each engine has a big enough userbase that "designers" can't afford to ignore it, then maybe we'll actually see more web development instead of IE/Gecko development.
I was under the impression AOL didn't want the server products. For awhile, the products were sold under the "Sun-Netscape Alliance" as iPlanet and then Sun renamed them "Sun One [product type]". Now I think they have a new name again.. Java Enterprise System [product type]?
product type would be webserver, mail server, collaboration, etc.
The whole process was confusing. Aside from losing Netscape with the AOL deal, I miss the Netscape Developer Center content. In the old days, Netscape and Microsoft provided great documentation on using new web technologies. AOL killed a good share of the old Netscape content over time and Microsoft merged their content with MSDN and slowly targeted it to web application developers exclusively.
I remember downloading Netscape 2.0 beta to look at porn sites. When I first got on the web, it seemed like porn sites used new technologies like tables and animated gifs first. Well I was in high school at the time. The IE enhanced porn sites weren't as good. Who cared about a scrolling marquee on a porn site? Still, I had to switch to IE because Netscape 3 crashed all the time on me. I got back onboard with Netscape 4 but it was never the same.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
I'm a web developer. I write tons of JavaScript / CSS code each day. I have compatibility at the top of my priority list. I try to code to standards, using Firefox as the testbed. Then I make it compatible with IE. Finally, I test with Konqueror and Opera. You know how often I have to recode something to make it work with Konqueror? Maybe once in a month, minor changes, no more than a few minutes work.
:-P ). We won't see more web development.
You know how often I have to recode for Opera? Twice so far, in the last three years.
When you mostly code to standards, and don't use browser detects but functionality detects to get stuff working with IE, it's very rare that you need any change at all for Opera or KHTML. More fragmentation is good, but not because of the web pages and web applications. It's good because it gives competition a boost and we might actually see innovation in the browser field (SVG, CANVAS, OpenGL
(At least, not from the ones who already grasp the bottom line. Maybe from the ones who now only code for IE.)
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