Netscape - how the mighty have fallen.

Wow... I hear that Nescape 8.1 came out and I head on to http://browser.netscape.com to see what its supposed "features" are. Wow. This page has nothing. No info. Product info? Forget it. Just a link to the download, plus a tracking cookie from 2o7.net, and on the "system requirements" page... well, so it runs only on Windows, so any other option (UNIX, Mac) has been discontinued, nice. What we get instead of that is a big huge "fake dropdown form" banner on the page from the nice tracking people at doubleclick. It's also nice that all the links "product info", "security", "community", "support" all link to the same download page.

For laughs, "233 MHz processor (Recommended: 1 GHz processor or greater)"...

This almost looks like one of those "malware" pages a-la Winfixer, where every link directs you to the download.

How the mighty have fallen.

 

well. yeah AOL the most hated company in the entire universe boughtout netscape, dropped all of the few developers in the dirt,(some went to mozilla ) and starting branding it towards their "netscape" aol clone ISP, so it's dead.

firefox took it's place. (oh and dont delete this post, i'm watching you, mod)

 

if it matters, betanews mentions the following as changes in 8.1:

# Built-in spyware protection (automatically scans all downloads and blocks spyware/adware -- try whenu.com to check -- also full computer scan for 28K types)
# Built-in RSS reader -- read RSS feeds in browser rather than separate reader needed
# Multiple profiles so different fam members/users can have different settings/passwords/bookmarks etc
# New security center with all security settings highlighted

 

Well, thanks. I'm not questioning the quality of the product (though I wouldn't install it) but the actual policy of promotion. Looking at that page, it's almost as if they DON'T WANT people to try it (the tracking cookies and doubleclick banner also make their "no spyware" claims somewhat questionable... not technically spyware, but doubleclick's and 2o7.net's ethics are not exactly what I call "immaculate").

 

@TNT - the sections u mentioned in ur original post for whatever reason work in IE but not Fx. i have ietab so it isnt a terrible inconvenience but i dont care much anyways as my browser of choice is Fx.

 

Ohh... ok. I see. They work in Opera as well, but not in Firefox. Isn't Netscape based on Firefox? Maybe they won't work in Netscape?

 

what? netscape 8 is based on firefox 1.0, i think netscape made 8.1 based on firefox 1.5 prior versions of netscape were.. based on mozilla coding a little fuzzy on who branched off of who. netscape is not no open source, and netscape partly uses IE engine and is also owned by a dirty whore named AOL, Internet Explorer gets prodded enough, mind you. no need to venture into the dirty realms again.

 

The Netscape website works with Netscape 8.x (because the Netscape Browser uses the Internet Explorer engine on this website).

Netscape 8.1 seems still to be based on Firefox 1.0.7 and the general opinion is that it is a lot more responsive and a bit faster than the old version 8.0.

 

The only thing I liked about v8 was the "Download Control per page" feature, but that was about it. I will not install it again because it used way too much RAM.

 

I personally like NS 8.0 and now 8.1. The reason that I do not use it as my default browser is that it takes twice as long to load as Opera or FF. However, once it loads I like the way it browses and handles passwords.

I know the other do well, but NS is a good browser in my opinion for my use.

Jerry