Netscape 9 to Undo Netscape 8 Mistakes? 210
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?"
Re:Is Netscape still taken serious? (Score:3, Informative)
Linux 37 13.2 %
Unknown 35 12.5 %
Macintosh 4 1.4 %
GNU 1 0.3 %
Browsers (Top 10) - Full list/Versions - Unknown
Browsers Grabber Hits Percent
Firefox No 127 45.5 %
MS Internet Explorer No 91 32.6 %
Unknown ? 34 12.1 %
Konqueror No 10 3.5 %
Opera No 8 2.8 %
Mozilla No 6 2.1 %
Safari No 2 0.7 %
Wget
Re:Is Netscape still taken serious? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Is Netscape still taken serious? (Score:2, Informative)
Windows 7339 80.2 %
Linux 1059 11.5 %
Macintosh 554 6 %
Unknown 188 2 %
Browsers (Top 10) - Full list/Versions - Unknown
Browsers Grabber Hits Percent
Firefox No 6061 66.3 %
MS Internet Explorer No 1945 21.2 %
Mozilla No 356 3.8 %
Safari No 315 3.4 %
Opera No 260 2.8 %
Konqueror No 76 0.8 %
Unknown ? 63 0.6 %
Netscape No 30 0.3 %
Camino No 25 0.2 %
Galeon No 6 0 %
Others 3 0 %
Re:3 was the last worthwhile version. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:3 was the last worthwhile version. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:3 was the last worthwhile version. (Score:3, Informative)
Well, if it's a sodding web browser you want, I can highly recommend IE7. It definitely ups the sod factor significantly.
I wonder if someone could come up with a Navigator 3 theme for Firefox that would configure the interface to the (vastly superior) Navigator 3 interface. That'd be nice. I'd keep CSS though, if I were you (although I'd make sure minimum font size and override web author colours was turned on).
As far as speed goes, I think most people would be SHOCKED at how much faster the Web experience is if you have a caching name server running on your machine. Seriously - the biggest speedup you'll probably ever see.
Re:There's a Netscape 9? And 8? 7? 6? (Score:3, Informative)
Um, there's still a big market for Fortran compilers... and F2003 has lots of "modern" features, so it's not really living in the past.
Re:Is Netscape still taken serious? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What is the point? (Score:4, Informative)
One thing I can guarantee: Netscape 9 will not force you to supply a zipcode when you install it. That's one Netscape 8 mistake it will definitely undo.
Christopher Finke
Dev lead for Netscape 9
Netscape 9 Was Supposed To Be So Much More... (Score:1, Informative)
Because of Calacanis' bad decisions, hundreds of people at AOL's Columbus, OH campus lost their writing, editing, design, development, and management jobs. The aforementioned loss of portal viewership has also cost AOL (with its new advertising-heavy revenue model, mind you) untold amounts of money. The "New Netscape" is, and has always been, a colossal mistake -- a "me too" effort on a grand scale.
Jason Calacanis is gone. Jon Miller, his idol and strong supporter, has been "warmly" shown the door. AOL now needs some serious focus and innovation to gain audience, not more halfhearted "Web 2.0" efforts that nobody is going to use.