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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."
I may be a little out of the loop, but I'm surprised that Netscape is still around. I thought the Microsoft monopolizing juggernaut that is Internet Explorer wiped out the once famous net browser...guess I was wrong.
He then proceeds to order an Aristotle of the most ping-pong tiddly in the nuclear sub.
I don't need another version to bring back sad memories of the 90s.
Honestly, I don't mean this as a troll, but does anyone use Netscape? Even AOL doesn't use Netscape. What's the point?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
"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 wonder if Netscape still have the brand power to draw in old skool internet users to use their product once again if it turns out to be a good alternative to IE/FF/Opera/etc...
I first started using Netscape back in 95 and used it for years till IE5 came out. After that I just got stuck with IE and used Opera here and there but I always had Netscape in the back on my mind. Hey its its based on FF and works good I'd switch to it just because it was my first browser.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Netscape confirms it.
Ah, I remember using Netscape before I'd even heard of IE... That was back when all I knew about Microsoft was that Windows was the wrong kind of computer, because my family had a MAC! (System 7.5) How I'll miss that shooting star in the upper right-hand corner of the screen...
Because I have only one radiation suit...
No, wait, let me do it. Please?
Netscape 7 really was a nice browser. I can't fault it. It was fast, stable and lean. I actually think it was more stable then Firefox. Just make sure you don't install all that junk that came with it. I used 7.2 on Linux until about 1 year ago. Unfortunately, it became pretty antiquated and started rendering some pages wrong, handling things like google video not very well. Firefox eventually became the better option for me. Now version 8 was horrible. It lasted about 5 minutes on my Windows laptop. This version looks promising. After a brief spin, I like it. Not that it has so many great advantages or anything, but curiosity usually encourages me to change around because things get boring. I think everyone is really starting to get the browser right and refined. I like all the new ones, IE7, Opera and Mozilla. The competition is helping keep quality in check.
I think the correct way to phrase that question is:
WHAT IS AOL????
No wait. Make that I wouldn't want vi to come back from the grave.
It's basically a re branded version of Firefox 2.0...
From About: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.5pre) Gecko/20070604 Firefox/2.0.0.4 Navigator/9.0b1
NetWho? Is that some sort of Mozilla knockoff?
Then do you also say "Internet Exploder"?
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
Oh no he didn't...
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.
No, I say "Insecure Exploder".
Of course, I also call Outlook, "LookOut!"
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Wasn't Netscape a cheap ISP for a while? Now it's a browser again?
I'm confused.
You can't take the sky from me...
Can I get a "ME TOO!!!"?
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.
Didn't Netscape drop mail and composer a while back? Let's see...
From Netscape's Browser FAQ (emphasize is mine):
If I recall correctly, Netscape 7 was based on the Mozilla suite (now known as SeaMonkey) and included those components, and with version 8, they based it on Firefox (which never included mail and composer) and went back to calling it "Navigator".
You'd think that "journalists" might research their stories a little bit.
Outlook should be called Outhouse.
"Outlook not so good" was our favorite phrase during a recent (somewhat painful) mail conversion.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
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.
h
Valkyrie is about to die! Wizard needs food -- badly!
JWZ, of original Netscape, famously referred to AOL's continual efforts to slap the "Netscape" name on something, anything -- a browser variant, a portal, a low-cost internet connection, whatever -- as "brand necrophilia".
You're both wrong. The correct phrasing is: WHAT IS AOL????!!?!!!!111
-William Brendel
What is AOL?
It's the company that makes Winamp. They used to make free backup diskettes that you had to reformat before using. They sent hundreds of millions of them around for free by attaching them to anything that moved. I used to have to peel them off my car each night when I got home from work. Later, they got into the landfill business by making and distributing hundreds of millions of non re-writeable CD's.
Did you actually /use/ Netscape 4.0x? I can only assume you didn't, because Communicator/Navigator 4.0x was bloated and unstable shite.
Maybe you're thinking of 4.5 and later, but I had given up and bought an Opera license before that version was released.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
This reviewer apparently has not used any recent releases of Netscape (as I have). I am currently using Netscape version 7.2, now, to write this article (I abandoned Internet Explorer a long time ago due to security issues; I only use it when I get a site that will only work with IE). I have Netscape 8.1 installed, but I don't use it a whole lot, because (1) they moved the menus from the left side to the right side (2) they removed the print button, and (most significant) (3) they removed mail and composer. Without mail as part of the program it has reduced functionality. With mail as part of the program I can just click on 'Window' and 'Mail' to send a message; otherwise I have to go to the start menu and find whatever the hell the program is that is the mail suite spun out of Mozilla, Evolution? (I looked it up in the start menu; it's called Thunderbird.) I used to use composer and sometimes I use it when I need to build a table, so while it's unfortunate I can live without it. Mail and composer has been gone since at least 8.1, was this guy unaware of this?
Paul Robinson — My BlogThe lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
The Seamonkey suite is the ongoing project of the original Mozilla Suite. It has the functionality of Netscape 7 (plus some) as well as the updated support of the rendering engine from Firefox 2 and other security updates. (see the news release for more info.
Disclosure: I have been running Mozilla suite and now Seamonkey since about 1999.
Like pi? Try 10,000 digits.
I think Netscape lives on in Firefox and other Gecko based browsers (of which the one currently called "Netscape" is just one). It's just a name change.
Sure, there was a complete rewrite from the original netscape, but at least initially, that was mostly done by employees of netscape (well, the netscape division of AOL).
People get too hung up on the names, in my opinion. If Firefox was just called "Netscape The Next Generation" and this thing was just called "AOL's branded version of Netscape TNG", the only real difference between today would be that no one could claim that Netscape was dead.
On installing the beta, I found that it'll import settings & bookmarks from:
MSIE
Netscape 8
Netscape 6/7/Mozilla 1.x
Netscape 4.x
Opera
I'm impressed that it'll import from Opera. But I'm astonished that it won't import from the second-most-used browser out there -- the one with which it shares the most code! Guess users are stuck with exporting the bookmarks from Firefox and then importing them from the file.
I certainly hope this is on the buglist to get fixed before the final release.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Yes, this is basically just a slightly modded version of Firefox. They have a link from http://browser.netscape.com/ to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/user/5683 6 if you want to add their stuff to your Firefox. I'm not sure on the details, but this should give you at least some of the benefits of Netscape without having to use their full product.
Code to web standards, test in IE.
Also, in TFA, it says it's based on firefox.
"The need to build the internet comes from something inside us, something programmed... something we can't resist."
Why not use SeaMonkey instead? It's from the same code base as Netscape 7.2 with all kinds of new features and bug fixes, and (most significantly) many years of security vulnerability fixes. It also has menus on the left side, a print button, and mail and composer.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
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".
Netscape 4 didn't "kill" Netscape in the popular conscience. The five year gap between it and Netscape 7 did. Netscape 5 was skipped, version 6 was a glorifed beta, and version 4 got WAY long in the tooth. Even so, I used it sporadically myself well into 2003!
Netscape 4 was slower than Netscape 3. However, so were IE 4 and IE 5, and they were hardly lightweights in any sense of the term...especially when your computer had to labor twice as long at startup to bring all of IE 4/5's web-integrated "shell enhancements" to boot...if anything, IE was more sluggish at rendering. As for bugs, the later versions (i.e., 4.08 and 4.6-4.8) were much more stable than the earlier ones, and Netscape crashes seldom if ever brought down the whole system in the way IE's did.
As for Netscape 4 being a security nightmare, how was that so? It didn't contain ActiveX. It wasn't tied stock and barrel to the OS like IE was. If Netscape 4 did in fact have rampant security issues in its era, I certainly didn't hear a word about them at the time.
http://isp.netscape.com/
You can't take the sky from me...
Netscape 8 was Windows only. So this is the first release of Netscape for Linux that does not have mail or composer. That is important to note, as the review is on linux.com.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
You can simplify things a lot by focusing your testing on engines, rather than browsers.
For instance, Firefox 2, SeaMonkey, 1.2, Camino 1.5 and Netscape 9 all use the same major version of Gecko. Unless you're dealing with something controlled by the UI -- extensions, for instance, or the search box on the toolbar -- they're going to treat your code more or less the same. You'll start seeing bigger differences in screen size and platform.
I have several Firefox T-shirts (yeah, I know, I'm a geek). About half the time, when I walk into a store, an employee or another customer will see the shirt and make a positive comment about Firefox. So, anecdotally, there's a positive perception of the Firefox brand out there. I remember a time when Mosaic and then Netscape WERE synonymous with the Web. I suspect that time is long gone.
(It would be an interesting experiment walking around with an IE shirt. But I'm not brave enough to do it).
[Insert pithy quote here]
I like how the toolbar in the screenshot is full of links about Opera.
Thought after IE came out and Netscape more or less died, it was released as OSS which became Mozilla and eventually Firefox. So confused over this new release, is this an updated fork of the original code that became Mozilla?
I do not think that word means what you think it means ...
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. Yeah, I remember those days. I stubbornly stuck with Nutscrape 4.x for the longest time simply because I could not bring myself to use IE. I ended up working at a place that was standardized to all IE5 and realized "you know what? It doesn't suck as bad as Nutscrape." It was what, a 20 or 30mb download and then came bundled with four different kinds of this and that software? what a pain!
It took me a long time to switch from IE over to Firefox but I'm loving it now. The best part is losing the web browser doesn't take down the desktop along with it.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Let's face it ! Nothing will run vista.
This package Does Not Contain a Winner
OMGROTFLMAOBBQ!11!!!1!! r u serius? (I'll be quiet now...)
After calming me down with some orange slices and some fetal spooning, E.T. revealed to me his singular purpose.
Well... in all fairness... Netscape was the first widely accepted browser before any of the aforementioned web surfing tools. Therefore it deserves a place in the 'wars' even if it is all but dead. Also... Internet Explorer 7 is a big leap above IE6 in all aspects so it is a bit more like Firefox now, albeit not as widely admired.
So, this is built on Stallmans code, but where can I find the sources? Or is there some other license coming into effect here?
Wow, didn't know Netscape was still developing. I was under the assumption that Mozilla/Seamonkey took over Netscape's role, but hey, you learn something new everyday. I was also wondering what the point of developing Netscape really is. I mean everyone uses Firefox, and if you want the extra bloat, you can use Seamonkey. But then it hit me. Netscape's core is Firefox. All they really did was take Firefox and repackage it with their own selection of extensions. Seamonkey is also the same, but with different extensions. So this indicates to me that Firefox needs to really get back to basics. The Firefox team should work on keeping their browser lean and mean. Just the basics to get the job done and keep improving Gecko. The Netscapes and Seamonkeys and Flocks out there can worry about packaging features, and most of us geeks will "roll our own." Essentially, Firefox becomes more like the Linux Kernel and Netscape et. al. become the distributions (OK OK I know Gecko is probably more like the kernel, but work with me here).
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
that is written from the ground up in Java to blow away IE 4.0?
I used Netscape as a primary browser on my linux box (just b/c Firefox refused to install for the longest time) and the default home page, netscape.com was the worst portal site I've seen. It probably could've been customized, but 40% of it was pop gossip culture, 40% of it was relationship talk, and maybe 20% of it was news. It looks like they've changed it somewhat, but seeing that type of news on a default page changed my perception of netscape permanently.
I signed up for a netscape.net email address 8 years ago (now AOL mail), and the interface was terrible. It's one redeeming factor was it was the only one of my email addresses that never got spammed, while my unpublished hotmail one, which I never used, was spammed from day 1.
Well, both are kind of right... I actually liked IE4's object model better than NN4.0x, I worked at a place that had to support NN4.04 (that specific version, as our biggest client used it).. as well as IE4+ for everyone else... dealing with document.layers vs. document.all was easily in favor of document.all methods.. especially since I could hide portions of a form, without breaking up pieces into each layer that would be visible or not... Not even to mention the flickering when creating dynamic elements (usually covered the entire page with a white element while rendering, and hid it when done... Netscape
Now, this was before the wave after wave of security exploits surrounding the ActiveX/COM code used and or available to IE scripting, let alone the insane default security under IE's engine in Outlook, and OE. As of Firefox 1.0 FF was so far ahead of IE it isn't even funny. IE7 has made a lot of gains, but to be honest, the new UI in IE bugs the hell out of me. Of course, you need some wiz bank to get people to want to upgrade, and think something impressive has happened. Oh well... to end this bit of a rant, NN4 had issues all around... 4.0x had a lot of memory issues until 4.08 in my experience, and the 4.5x was hugely bloated crap. At least now (6-8 years later), we have computers that can handle a little more bloat and features.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Beating the dead horse since 2005 (tm).
Sure. But, when you find yourself living out of your vehicle, a tour bus has certain advantages.
sudo rm -f `which vi` && export EDITOR=/usr/bin/emacs-*.*-no-x11 && emacs -nw --load=www-notes-mode.elc --funcall=www-notes-mode --funcall=www-notes-enable-electric-entry --funcall=www-notes-jump-to-last-entry
(Yeah, okay - now we're really starting to get really silly.)
Oh Netscape....
*sigh* such a frittered away opportunity.
Ya could have been a contender!
Yes, also take note of the versions and timelines. IE 4 (Oct. 1997) was released after Netscape 4 (Jun. 1997). IE 5 isn't really a fair comparison. IE 4 was pretty much a match feature for feature, but the default browser on the OS meant the loss of significant sales to Netscape. Netscape never really released another version because of the financial hit, just minor bug fix releases of 4.0 - 4.5
Netscape 4.x sure was worse than IE5. I remember the relief of changing away from it, even though I had some loyalty to Netscape (even bought two versions of it!). And a lot of the mistake was spending 2-3 years rewriting everything to create Mozilla.
But I would like to THANK Netscape and AOL for the millions of dollars they poured into doing that rewrite. Even though it's not perfect, they (and NOT, mainly, open source developers working for free) created the vast majority of what is now the best browser in the world. There was an enormous amount of code created to do a cross platform toolkit, a fine renderer, and a good javascript implementation.
All that Firefox has done on top of that has been mainly polishing and adjustments. To date, relatively little has been changed at a fundamental level (I guess with FF3 and various new engines that will change).
From the outside, it was very obvious when the funding dried up and Mozilla org was created. For quite a while it appeared that development almost stopped. That was obviously due to most of the engineers beind dismissed.
So, thanks again Netscape and AOL (!)
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
Yeah! let's criticize the competition! Forget about the real problem with the vagueness of web standards. You should also forget that Netscape has the same engine than firefox and be as hard as you can with the competition so you can write html faster.
AOL laid off all of the Netscape engineers many years ago and the last browser was outsourced to Mercurial (small Canadian company). So who developed this one?
I've actually enjoyed using the beta of NN v9.0 over the last few days. Gone are the e-mail and web design components - this browser is lean and mean, and enjoys two very useful features that aren't bundled with other browsers: Mini Browser and Link Pad. I also like the smaller buttons. Netscape Navigator is FAST - and works with all of Firefox 2.0's plug-ins.
I doubt Netscape Navigator will ever reach its former level of glory, but they've certainly won me with this release.
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