Well, since my rant on how Netscape just don’t care anymore, the former internet heavyweight has released the hyped new version of their browser, Netscape 8. Netscape (read AOL) have basically put a few bells and whistles on top of the excellent Firefox and hailed it as the latest and greatest.
Yay.
Let’s have a look at what’s good and bad about Netscape 8.
What’s right about Netscape 8
Nine months of bugs finally fixed
Just when we were starting to wonder if the Netscape browser had been abandoned…
In my previous article, I pointed out that there had not been any attempt to fix serious bugs in the Netscape browser between August 2004 and May 2005. Nine months of entropy on today’s internet is simply begging for trouble.
After waiting 9 months for gaping holes in the browser’s security to be addressed, they have finally ticked off all the bugs that remained in the previous Windows version of Netscape. They have done this by simply replacing the main part of the browser with Mozilla Firefox (and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer… more on that later), adding a few “enhancements” and then rebadging it as their own.
Using Firefox as the base for the browser could be a good thing, as they should be able to take advantage of the quick turnaround that the Mozilla Foundation exhibits in fixing Firefox vulnerabilities.
Whether they actually deliver on this remains to be seen. Recent history has not exactly filled me with confidence.
Gecko meets Trident
Sound like some reptilian gladiatorial match?
One common complaint of the internet browsing populace is that somewebsite.com can’t be accessed by their browser. This is invariably due to the fact that the website’s designer hasn’t built it properly by making use of web standards. Unfortunately for the hapless user, this can lead to quite a frustrating experience.
Netscape attempts to provide a solution to this situation by utilising not just one browser, but two. In fact, utilising the two most popular browsers in the marketplace today — its own version of Mozilla Firefox and the ubiquitous Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Well, to be exact, not browsers, per se, but the rendering engines that power those browsers. Firefox uses the excellent Gecko rendering engine (shared by the Mozilla suite and others), whereas Internet Explorer creaks along with the venerable Trident engine.
When first accessing a website with Netscape 8, it will normally use the safer Firefox (using the Gecko rendering engine) to display the page. Netscape then allows the user to switch to Internet Explorer to display the site if needed (or desired… who would desire this? 
), either by using a button on the status bar or by adding the site to a list.
It appears that the folks who brought us this version of Netscape have tried to provide users with the best of both worlds by supplying a modern browser (Firefox) but allowing users to harken back to the olden days by switching to an internet relic (Internet Explorer).
More on this later (see Netscape’s enhanced security, below).
And now for something completely different…