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AOL Releases Netscape Beta, Based on Firefox 483

Posted by michael from the browser-wars-still-over dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Netscape has released their new prototype browser for Windows based on Firefox 0.9.3. The prototype's development was outsourced to Mercurial Communications and includes several Netscape specific extensions. The biggest difference from Firefox, however, is the ability to switch to the Internet Explorer rendering engine from within the browser using an IE ActiveX control. The browser is currently available for a limited download."
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AOL Releases Netscape Beta, Based on Firefox More

AOL Releases Netscape Beta, Based on Firefox

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  • Also (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:24PM (#10955285)
    There are screenshots and comments over at Planet Mozilla [mozilla.org].

    • Re:Also (Score:3, Interesting)

      by pcmanjon ( 735165 )
      Why in the sam hill would I want to 'switch to internet explorer rendering'?

      Isn't that the whole reason we go to firefox? For safer browsing?

      If I want to browse with IE's engine, I'll use IE, which won't take time to load since it's resident in the systems memory already.

      Duh. Why would anyone download a browser to browse in IE?

      • Re:Also (Score:5, Informative)

        by RevAaron ( 125240 ) <revaaron AT hotmail DOT com> on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:50PM (#10955638) Homepage
        Why in the sam hill would I want to 'switch to internet explorer rendering'?

        These days it is very rare that I'd need to view a page in IE, but it happens once in a while for me. For that, I use an extension for FF that lets me right click and say "open in IE." *shrug* Some folks may run into this problem more, and if this is done well, you could just pop into IE and view that page, then move on, keeping your tabs in the same window, etc.

      • Re:Also (Score:3, Informative)

        by Rick the Red ( 307103 )

        Why would anyone download a browser to browse in IE?

        AOL's browser (the one that comes on all those CDs) is based on IE. This is probably the first step in migrating it from IE to Netscape. Why else did AOL buy Netscape?

        Also, I use Avant [avantbrowser.com], which is based on IE, because it offers features not found elsewhere (such as movable tabs, multiple rows of tabs, and remembering your open tabs when you close it, features Firefox lacks).

      • Re:Also (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ptlis ( 772434 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @04:02PM (#10955769) Homepage

        Say i'm developing a webpage, it validates with the W3C [w3.org] validator and I want to make sure it renders correctly in IE as well as gecko based browsers; this would mean I could load the page up in Netscape, view it with the gecko rendering engine, followed by IE. I'd then modify the CSS so that it renders reasonably in IE then switch back to gecko to ensure it still works correctly with it. This would mean less clutter for me when testing on Windows as it means I don't need Firefox & multiple instances of IE on my taskbar; instead there'd just be Netscape containing a bunch of tabs.

        I hate any form of excess clutter in my desktop environment/window manager.

        • Re:Also (Score:3, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered.....my life is my own.
          Duly noted, slashdot user #772434

        • Re:Also (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Chuck Chunder ( 21021 )
          less clutter
          It's not often you hear that term describing a modern Netscape browser [gemal.dk]!

      • Re:Also (Score:5, Insightful)

        by wfmcwalter ( 124904 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @04:41PM (#10956266) Homepage
        It doesn't make much, if any, difference to slashdotters like you and I. But to AOL it's potentially a very big deal indeed. It'd be foolish to infer too much about AOL's internal thinking from one technology offering (particularly about a company so prone to factionalism as AOL) but this might imply that at least some part of the company is maneuvering for a firefox-based AOL client to be the standard.

        I think it's likely AOL would like to move to a Firefox client, as there are several real business advantages for them, including

        • They bear the brunt of the support-call cost for a subscriber's entire PC (particularly for viruses, spyware, pagejacking, and increasingly fraud). Moving their userbase away from IE would surely save them a fair amount of this, and that's real dollars and cents.
        • No-one wants their business to be dependant on Microsoft, particularly folks like AOL who are locked in competition with MS on a variety of fronts. The more they can extricate themselves from said dependency the safer they'll feel, and even a partial extrication today is better than none, and can be a stepping stone to dumping MS altogether. That's no wide-eyed open-source idealism, it's cold hard corporate survivalism.
        • For a vertically-integrated provider like AOL, firefoxes UI framework and ease of extension makes for an attractive platform.

        The fly in the ointment for them is website compatibility. Sure, most sites do indeed work fine, but there's a sufficiently large number that don't to make AOL switching untenable. A number of the folks I've successfully switched to firefox have migrated back, particularly because either their bank, airline, or corporate portal have been IE only.

        Now, AOL has a full list of the sites their customers visit, and can easily compile a list of the major ones that need IE. They can build this list into an integrated firefox-IE browser, so that it switches to IE for those "legacy mode" sites seemlessly. That may well be what this netscape is - a test version of a "smart-switching" AOL client.

        If they wanted to (although I can't see as much business case for them to want to) AOL could then put pressure on those sites that don't work with firefox to fix their issues. THey can threaten to start popping up little windows saying "legacy mode support", "backward-compatibility mode", or "old-style technology mode", a mark of Cain the site in question would rather avoid.

        But most of all it's an option. In business, an option is an advantage even if you don't take it - in this case it's a great stick with which to beat Microsoft in future negociations. So it's a smart move to make, and a scary (for MS) technology for them to have - it's what MS fears the most, a smooth migration path away from MS.

        • Google not AOL! (Score:3, Interesting)

          by fupeg ( 653970 )

          AOL could then put pressure on those sites that don't work with firefox to fix their issues. THey can threaten to start popping up little windows saying "legacy mode support", "backward-compatibility mode", or "old-style technology mode", a mark of Cain the site in question would rather avoid.

          The guys who really need to do this is Google. They could determine what sites get the "mark of Cain" when they crawl the sites to refresh their index. They could even put one nasty icons if a site has pop-ups, anot

        • Re:Also (Score:3, Funny)

          by Chandon Seldon ( 43083 )
          "The site you are viewing uses insecure extensions. Would you like to go into insecure mode?

          Yes | No"
      • For sites that code to ie-only standards, using the IE engine is the ONLY way to view such websites. Period.

        This would be a nice extension to firefox, actually.

    • Full circle? (Score:4, Funny)

      by sgant ( 178166 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @04:03PM (#10955784) Homepage Journal
      Didn't this kinda go around in a sort of weird Karma circle?

      The new Netscape, based on Firefox...which itself is based on Mozilla...which is the off-shoot of Netscape.

      Wow...just blew out me mind...

  • Perfect Name for a Ripoff Artist (Score:4, Funny)

    by mfh ( 56 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:24PM (#10955289) Homepage Journal
    The prototype's development was outsourced to Mercurial Communications and includes...

    That's the perfect name for a company hired to knock-off the Firefox browser:

    Mercurial:
    Having the characteristics of eloquence, shrewdness, swiftness, and thievishness attributed to the god Mercury.

    • Re:Perfect Name for a Ripoff Artist (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ADRA ( 37398 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:29PM (#10955362)
      Hey hey, lets not be too hateful to AOL. They did support the Mozilla development environment for a good many years for like 0 profit. Lets not jump on their a$$es for doing something completely legal and in my eyes, ethical & moral.

      If ANYTHING is used to offset the IE juggernaut, then so be it. I don't have a problem with the dual HTML engine technique since many people DO need activex support, at least once and a while.

      • Re:Perfect Name for a Ripoff Artist (Score:5, Informative)

        by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:57PM (#10955705) Journal
        They did support the Mozilla development environment for a good many years for like 0 profit

        Actually did far more than that...

        They donated $2 million to the Mozilla Foundation to get them going and willingly donated the mozilla.org domain name, the Mozilla-related trademarks, and related equipment such as the mozilla.org servers, to Mozilla Foundation. They was obliged to do none of this, just having purchased Netscape and got all this along with them.

        See also this story [infotoday.com].
    • My first question was, "WTF?" What's the point of making a competiting browser, which ALLOWS YOU TO EXECUTE CODE FROM THE BROWSER YOU ARE COMPETITING WITH?

      Does this seem stupid to anyone else? I think I understand why AOL would approve such an idea, as I've seen those commercials where apparently every AOL user has a say (one of those morons probably said they wanted pages to render with all that fancy shit which results in your COMPUTER BEING HIJACKED).

      Please note I say morons with as much love is as hum

      • Re:Perfect Name for a Ripoff Artist (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ADRA ( 37398 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:35PM (#10955460)
        " ALLOWS YOU TO EXECUTE CODE FROM THE BROWSER YOU ARE COMPETITING WITH?"

        This is how Microsoft has won basically every battle it faced in the 90's anyways. IE supported NS extensions, Windows supports Novell, UNIX. Word supports Corel, etc..

        Don't you get the game yet? If given the option of Netscape X and IE, you'd choose Netscape X because it can do everything IE does, PLUS Firefox built-in features. If you want to start weaning ppl off IE, its better to attack with a good migration plan.
        • This is how Microsoft has won basically every battle it faced in the 90's anyways.
          IE supported NS extensions, Windows supports Novell, UNIX. Word supports Corel, etc..
          Only as long as it suited them.

        • Plan? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Prince Vegeta SSJ4 ( 718736 )
          If you want to start weaning ppl off IE, its better to attack with a good migration plan.

          All I did was install Firefox on every computer in my office, set it as the default browser, and removed the IE icon from anywhere possible.

          Finally, I renamed the little foxy world thingy to 'Internet Explorer' and voila - everyone migrated. Guess how many people noticed?

          Any incompatibilities come with very few sites that IMO most people don't use anyway. The people, that would understand what was wrong would kn

        • Re:Perfect Name for a Ripoff Artist (Score:5, Funny)

          by MC Negro ( 780194 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @04:15PM (#10955950) Journal

          This is how Microsoft has won basically every battle it faced in the 90's anyways. IE supported NS extensions, Windows supports Novell, UNIX. Word supports Corel, etc..

          Don't you get the game yet? If given the option of Netscape X and IE, you'd choose Netscape X because it can do everything IE does, PLUS Firefox built-in features. If you want to start weaning ppl off IE, its better to attack with a good migration plan.
          Preach it, brother! Just look at emacs - recent iterations have included not only vi, but Internet Explorer, FireFox, Mosaic and the complete AmigaOS, just to ensure extra compatbility.

          *ducks*

  • and (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    In Korea, only the old use ActiveX controls.

    hahahahhahaha.

    worst. slashdot. cliche. evar.

  • why another browser. (Score:2, Redundant)

    by blanks ( 108019 )
    It seems like Netscape really dosent care to try staying in the browser market, so why do they keep trying, will this just be another project that will be killed again in a few months/years.

    Im just conserned because im a web developer, and really would perfer not to need to worry about another browser that might not follow standards.
    • would perfer not to need to worry about another browser that might not follow standards.

      If it's based on Firefox it uses the geko engine. No need to worry.

    • Two Words: Name Recognition (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DaHat ( 247651 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:31PM (#10955402)
      For the non geek, there are only two web browsers, Microsoft and Netscape. One comes with Windows and is easy... the other has grown to suck more and more over the years. No matter how good Firefox, Opera or any others may be, they don't have the name recognition that Netscape still has.

      I would expect that a major Netscape release like this with a Firefox backend will do a lot to draw the non tech folks who continue to use IE because they think it is their only option.
      • For the non geek, there are only two web browsers, Microsoft and Netscape.

        Nah, for non-geeks, there are only two web browsers: AOL and Yahoo. As anyone on the street what browser they use, and I bet the vast majority would say AOL or Yahoo.

        Some more hip non-geeks might reply "Google"... but only because they've installed the Google toolbar.

      • Re:Two Words: Name Recognition (Score:5, Funny)

        by mkro ( 644055 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:40PM (#10955532)
        For the non geek, there are only two web browsers, Microsoft and Netscape.
        I work at a helpdesk. Among the non-geek, there are two web browsers: "Internet" and "Internet Explorer". Both groups recognise it by the blue "e" icon.
      • For the non geek, there are only two web browsers, Microsoft and Netscape

        Nope. For old geezers there are two web browsers. For regular non-geek people there is one -- Internet Explorer. Period.

  • Yet at the same time... (Score:5, Informative)

    by the_mighty_$ ( 726261 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:26PM (#10955309)
    ...they are beta testing a new IE based browser [betanews.com].
    • In WinXP - why, when you click anywhere in the browser that's not a text box, do you get a blinking cursor? And, how do you turn it off? In W2K/98x this doesn't happen at all, but in XP it really ticks me off. I can't get rid of it or find it in the about:config area.

      Any tips?

  • IE rendering engine (Score:4, Insightful)

    by iJed ( 594606 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:26PM (#10955316) Homepage
    Surely including an IE rendering engine negates one of the biggest advantages of moving to Firefox: fewer security exploits.
    • It's the rendering engine. It is responsible for rendering the pages correctly on your screen and should not impose a security risk.

      • Re:IE rendering engine (Score:4, Insightful)

        by say ( 191220 ) <<on.hadiarflow> <ta> <evgis>> on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @05:25PM (#10956769) Homepage

        It's the rendering engine. It is responsible for rendering the pages correctly on your screen and should not impose a security risk.

        That is -4, completely insightless. Although everyone agrees that a rendering engine should not impose a security risk, the entire point of security flaws in IE is that its rendering engine imposes risks. Its rendering engine (pipeline) includes ActiveX objects, VBScript and all the other atrocities causing all the bad stuff.

        The Netscape browser offers you to render stuff by using MSHTML.DLL, which includes a small IE within another program. Many programs does so nowadays. And all the other browsers out there (Neowin etc.) are really just shells around an IE ActiveX object.

        So, all problems with IEs security will be accurately reproduced when activating IE rendering in this Netscape browser. (And all flaws of Gecko will be produced when you use Gecko).

  • Will this get incorperated into the FF code?

  • Switch to IE rendering? (Score:5, Funny)

    by dextroz ( 808012 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:27PM (#10955324)
    That's like saying: it's got the ability to piss it's pants when it lacks a toilet!

  • Coral Cache of Beta Download (Score:4, Informative)

    by BobPaul ( 710574 ) * on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:27PM (#10955329) Journal
    Downloading much faster via the Coral Cache Link [nyud.net], so I thought I'd post it.

  • Screenshots (Score:3, Informative)

    by levell ( 538346 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:27PM (#10955336) Homepage
    Henrik Gemal has screenshots here [gemal.dk]

    • Holy crap, my eyes! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Osty ( 16825 )

      Who thought this [gemal.dk] skin looked good? I mean, sure, Netscape is understaffed and all (being nothing more than a name), but you'd think that AOL could afford a UI designer that wasn't blind!

      Folks, this is why skinning an application is bad. For every attractive skin that gets published (and those really are few and far between), there's thousands of craptacular skins just like this that people think look good. Excuse me while I go poke out my eyes. I just can't take the seafoam green any more ...

  • Bored at Work (Score:5, Funny)

    by Skyshadow ( 508 ) * on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:27PM (#10955339) Homepage
    Forgive me, first thing that popped into my head. I'm bored.

    Morpheus: Microsoft is our enemy, Firefox, but when you're on the internet, you look around. What do you see? Business men, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still IE users. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to switch to a browser that doesn't come included on their desktop when they bring their computers home from Best Buy and pop in the "2000 Free Hours!" AOL CD. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on Microsoft that they will fight to protect it. Were you listening to me Firefox, or were you looking at the woman surfing the hot lesbo porn?
    Firefox: I was...
    Morpheus: Look again.
    Woman has turned into Bill Gates, introducing new "standard" to break non-IE browsers.
    Morpheus: Freeze it!
    Firefox: What is it?
    Morpheus: IE-only standards. That means that anyone we haven't converted over is potential audience for crappy sites who only QA against IE. On the internet, you see this everywhere. We have survived by being standards-based, by working to be compatible. But these false "standards" are the gatekeepers.
    Firefox: Whoa.
    Morpheus: I won't lie to you, Firefox. Every single company or product that has stood their ground, everyone who was fought Microsoft has been crushed or aquired. But where they have failed, you will succeed.
    Firefox: Why?
    Morpheus: I saw Microsoft crush Netscape's market share. Men have come up with fantastic innovations only to find them incompatible or MS copies already included in the next version of Windows. Yet their programs are still based on factory-style programming and decisions made by pointy-hairs. Because of that, they will never be as secure or as functional as you can be.
    Firefox: What are you trying to tell me, that I can block pop-ups?
    Morpheus: I'm trying to tell you that when you're ready, you won't have to.

  • ActiveX? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ematic ( 217513 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:28PM (#10955350)
    How is it that Firefox can support ActiveX plugins? My thought was that not supporting ActiveX was a feature of Firefox. Besides, what's the point in supporting IE rendering, when Mozilla's is more robust and compliant to current standards?
    • what's the point in supporting IE rendering, when Mozilla's is more robust and compliant to current standards?

      Because...uh...the majority of people who author web pages aren't compliant to current standards. Could it be that?

    • Re:ActiveX? (Score:3, Informative)

      by dominator ( 61418 )
      While this may not be exactly the same thing AOL is using, it's interesting and topical nonetheless:

      Mozilla ActiveX Project [www.iol.ie]
      Mozilla ActiveX Control [www.iol.ie]

      Like it or not, a lot of corporations have at least 1 browser-based ActiveX control that their employees must use. Allowing Mozilla to run these programs would eliminate a major barrier to entry.

      The point in supporting IE rendering is that a large number of pages just don't work with Mozilla or refuse to render "correctly". For this reason, some browsers st

  • Boy, I hope they let me choose my own themes. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Japong ( 793982 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:29PM (#10955364)
    Ugly. [cachenetworks.com]

    It's like a horrid mixture of OSX and windows olive-green theme gone horribly wrong... The upper bars look cramped and the top right portion is a mess of buttons and widgets.

  • Good thinking guys! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Weaselmancer ( 533834 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:29PM (#10955369)

    The biggest difference from Firefox, however, is the ability to switch to the Internet Explorer rendering engine from within the browser using an IE ActiveX control.

    That is without exception, the dumbest thing I've ever heard of.

    Let's take Firefox - known for it's security - and have you enable ActiveX, the mack-daddy of all virus vectors. And then for an encore, have it run the mother-of-all virus vectors, IE - inside it!

    What do you do for an encore? Take a shower with your toaster???

    • But on the other hand...

      If the browser could offer to use the IE rendering engine as a secondary option, should the user wish to visit a mal-designed web site, then it would be a very useful quick switch.

      Obviously, to do this sensibly, you would have to:
      * Switch back to gecko the moment the user left the mal-designed site.
      * Disable ActiveX by default. And then only use it when the IE rendering engine is enabled.

      For those who know what they're doing, this is certainly a plus point.

      If it's suitably unint
    • That is without exception, the dumbest thing I've ever heard of.

      Let's take Firefox - known for it's security - and have you enable ActiveX, the mack-daddy of all virus vectors. And then for an encore, have it run the mother-of-all virus vectors, IE - inside it!

      This is AOL you are talking about. AOL. Who the hell cares what they do. AOL is more closely associated with crap than Charmin Toilet Paper. Screw 'em. They are not going to use the 'Firefox' brand. The Netscape name is already worthless, and compl

    • Re:Good thinking guys! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:40PM (#10955531)

      I disagree. In theory this is only mirroring what a number of users already do. Many users surf with Firefox until they get to a site that only works with IE, then switch to IE. That is not to say that this is not a security issue... actually a potential security disaster. Now all they need to do is make it mirror a more clueful user's behavior and automatically e-mail a complaint to the web master about their site's noncompliance with standards. Seriously though, this is still probably better from a safety standpoint than IE, and is workable as a default install for the clueless masses.

  • switch to the Internet Explorer rendering engine (Score:4, Interesting)

    by blanks ( 108019 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:30PM (#10955386) Homepage Journal
    "A source close to the company said AOL opted to include IE engine support in order to offer users more choice, as some sites are optimized for certain browsers. But to avoid security vulnerabilities found in IE, Netscape "gives the user the choice through Site Controls of what sites they trust and don't trust by allowing them to turn off Web functionalities that expose security holes on a per site basis," " Does this mean that while the IE engine is running it will be just as open to IE attacks? Or that people will have the ability to use built in IE features, or are those seperate to the IE engine...

  • Netscape is ruining the purpose of FireFox. (Score:5, Informative)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:30PM (#10955393)
    I always thought that Firefox was meant to streamline the webbrowsing experience? The first thing that I noticed when installing the browser is that it asked for my zipcode for weather reports. Ugh, no thanks, 90210 here I come. It also asks for a reboot after install. For what? What do I need to reboot after an install of a webbrowser for? What are they installing?

    It defaults to ONE ugly screen with a tab opened, a headlines ticker going, a "money" ticker going, and the menu bar on the opposite side of the window than I am used to. There's a "new tab" option on the left side of the browsing area instead of leaving the main tab open there. You think new users are going to like this? I don't.

    At least I don't see any AOL icons installed to my desktop or my favorites (yet). They might come after a restart though.

    It's nice to see the backing of AOL/Netscape on Firefox. People might recognize those two names before Firefox and they might switch. Especially if it can render the IE-only pages 100%.

  • Talk about having your priorities wrong (Score:4, Insightful)

    by OlivierB ( 709839 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:33PM (#10955427)
    "ability to switch to the IE engine"..
    or how to ruin the efforts of a community to develop a more secure browsing platform with only one mouse click.
    They should have concentrated on developing many extensions for the thing.
    Stuff like aim chat extension, save bookmarks, listen to netscape radio (i.e a a small taskbar control). I can think of way too many things before even considering running IE in Firefox.
    Why didn't they instead spend the $$$ improving rendering in FireFox so that all these IE only sites render properly?

  • Nothing against them (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Facekhan ( 445017 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:34PM (#10955440)
    I always liked Netscape and all but please can they just die already. They lost the browser war. They were bought, kept on life support, allowed to die, resurrected, killed off again. Now they are back? I have never seen such amounts of money and effort put into something that they are just going to give away for free anyways. (oh wait I have but at least linux and freebsd has a market)

    Oh well its a good way for AOL to hasten its own demise by burning more money on bad investments. If they charged one dollar a year for a not-shitty version of AIM they would probably get 500 million easy.

  • From the AOL point of view... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Thunderstruck ( 210399 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:35PM (#10955457)
    Many ask why aol/netscape bother with maintaining a browser. Perhaps the answer can be found by looking at AOL as a whole rather than just at the browsers themselves.

    Sure, this version of Netscape will probably go the way of others. It will also create, for a short while at least, greater diversity in the browser arena. This would, it seems, tend to force all browsers toward a unified standard of interoperability.

    AOL does not sell browsers, it sells content. If unified standards are used, it is better able to deliver that content. With a diverse browser environment, AOL also stands a better chance of not being "shut out" when a single, dominant, browser is "innovated" such that it can no longer reach AOL services. (Not that Microsoft would ever do that sort of thing.)

  • sign me up! (Score:3, Funny)

    by OffTheLip ( 636691 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:38PM (#10955494)
    Woohoo, that is the deal clincher. Sign me up for AOL today.

  • Utter madness (Score:2, Insightful)

    by onlyjoking ( 536550 )

    I can't believe it. Netscape struggled against M$ for years and lost then did the right thing giving birth to the Mozilla foundation, or at least nurturing it. Mozilla foundation produces the first high quality, standards-compliant competitors to M$ and what do Netscape do? Hack it so that it behaves more like IE.

    This is MADNESS. Then again, who gives a toss about Netscape anyway?

  • I don't understand... why would I want to be able to switch to an automated virus downloader?
  • You can use the new Firefox, on a Windows machine, which will have IE already installed, where Firefox looks and feels just like IE. Can anyone spell "pointless"?


    Besides, IE can't render PNGs properly. And if they use the old JPEG rendering engine, they've opened up a nice hole for trojans. So, now we have this new, wonderful control that lets you break images and maybe break security.


    Well, you can't blame them for trying to be consistant.

  • Credits seem to be missing a few names (Score:3, Interesting)

    by prandal ( 87280 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:42PM (#10955550)
    Help / About Netscape Browser, then click on the "Credits" button. Hmmm, a whole load of names missing there.
  • if users know it's based on Firefox. How many users will bother to only toggle into IE mode to get at certain sites? They'll just leave it in IE mode all the time (or not even be aware it's a special mode), get crap-full of viruses, and assume Firefox is no more secure than IE. If they only know it as Netscape they'll assume Netscape is as bad as IE, and they'll be less likely to believe hype about non-IE browsers as more secure. The only hope is if they don't associate Netscape and Firefox and just assume
  • Take a look at that screenshot - yet another shining example of how AOL just doesn't get it.

    Someone please tell them the point of Firefox was to be minimalist and NOT be chock full of useless crap?
  • The browser seems vaguely interesting in an academic sense, but who is seriously going to try this? Geeks have FF, Mac people have Safari and normies have IE; all have some ebb and flow into each other and some alternatives exist in a small niche.

    I have the feeling that this was a dumb idea sold to AOL execs by some really talented and unscrupulous middle manager looking for a way to not get his budget cut. AOL seems to actually be run pretty well - they target a completely different (read: clueless) aud
  • It's not a giant lizard, it's a monstrosity put together out of pieces of other things. If it came from northern Europe, we could call it "Chim-era" but instead it should be Chimzilla.

    And, yes, I know that there's already a browser named Chimera [chimera.org]. It's dead, Jim.

  • It LOOKS nice....
  • jebus christ, leave it up to netscape to ruin the concept of firefox.

    http://gemal.dk/misc/nsb05.png
  • The traditional argument around here has been that AOL/Netscape gives Mozilla/Firefox brand strength. Well, stuff like this is backfiring tremendously. Whether justified or not, the general public has long since identified Netscape as the 'loser' browser, and tend to scoff at anything that resembles it. One of the first things many people say to me when I install Mozilla is, "It kind of looks like Netscape" -- and they don't mean it in a good way. Thankfully, Firefox has taken away some of that stigma,

  • IE Extension (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For those that might not know, firefox has an ie extension available for download. It allows you to open the current page in IE. Why may you ask??? Because there are the occasional pages that just don't look right in firefox. Plus, it's a handy tool for designers who are interested to see how there page looks in the two browsers.
  • As someone who religiously uses the web developer tools [mozilla.org] for Firefox, I could REALLY use this IE engine switching feature in Firefox. Save me the trouble of Start-Programs-Internet Explorer.

    Yes, saving me 7 seconds is worth a team of people slaving weeks and weeks to put this in Firefox ;)

  • Sabotage (Score:5, Interesting)

    by poohsuntzu ( 753886 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:50PM (#10955643) Homepage
    Anyone thought about it? Tinfoil hats on, it would explain why such a bizarr move was pulled in the first place.

    1. Take the firefox build of one of the worst milestones possible.

    2. Allow it to use the IE Rendering Engine

    3. When it breaks, runs slow, has the same bugs as IE, blame it on the firefox base code.

    4. The users of the new netscape browser will think that firefox (that browser everyone keeps talking about) is just as bad as IE.

    5. IE users stay IE users, even netscape users because now they don't feel there is any reason to use firefox if it breaks all the time.

    6. ????

    7. Profit!!!

  • *dazed* (Score:2, Funny)

    by rgf71 ( 448062 )
    Ok, so...

    Netscape is making a browser based on Firefox, Mozilla's browser that is based on it's bigger Mozilla browser which is based on Netscape's old browser.

    My head asplode:/

  • User interface disaster (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jkujawa ( 56195 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:55PM (#10955684) Homepage
    Screen Shot" [cachenetworks.com]

    That is undoubtedly one of the worst UI disasters I've ever seen. Just looking at it makes my eyes hurt. The horrible choice in colors, the business, the unreadability of text due to gradients and poor color and font choices, and that's just looking at a static image. From the looks of it, I wouldn't be surprised if half the widgets were animated.

    It's like ... perfect awfulness. If a skilled and pissed-off user interface designer sat down to purposely design something as user-hostile as possible, I don't think he'd come up with something this bad.

    Ye gods.
    • Ugh. You are absolutely right. It actually looks like they hired Real's UI designers. It looks startingly like RealPlayer Intrusive(tm).

      Judging by what others have said about asking for a zip code for weather reports, forcing a reboot, etc., it sounds like they probably hired their core development and marketing team as well. :-(

  • The only good news . . . (Score:3, Funny)

    by superultra ( 670002 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:57PM (#10955708) Homepage
    . . . is that the lame IT guys at my school might finally replace the Netscape 6.x on all the machines with something a little closer to Firefox.

  • PERFECT! (Score:3, Funny)

    by 2MuchC0ffeeMan ( 201987 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:58PM (#10955719) Homepage
    all the benefits of firefox, and the biggest downfall of IE!

    AOL couldn't of made a better decision on this one.

    No wonder why it's #1!

  • OK... Gonna make myself majorly unpopular (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fozzmeister ( 160968 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @03:58PM (#10955726) Homepage
    but the Moz/FF stronghold is geeks, we need to get it on non-geek platforms. I've told my dad, my friends, everyone to switch to FF, but I always say "if you have problems on such and such a site go back to IE for that one alone". not being able to use the site which is your bank, or do your weekly competition with the Times (this is my Dad) is not acceptable to the end user. Get them on FF as much as possible, but if its all or nothing with them, you'll prob get nothing.

    For this reason I do broadly support the IE switching option, providing its like a button "Switch To IE" that would always render that (page/domain) in IE. Similar to the way "Allow Poppups works. This would solve the major problem of "I use IE because I often visit XYZ and FF doesn't support it".

    Saying that a universal "Switch to IE rendering" option is going to be more damaging than helpful to FF.

  • Chalk up another brainfart to AOL (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dracos ( 107777 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @04:45PM (#10956315)

    It appears more and more that AOL is hell bent on destroying every aspect of Netscape.

    The single biggest advantage of non-IE browsers is that they don't use the IE rendering engine (activeX, jpeg exploits, (d)com exploits, etc all boil down to this).

    This version of Netscape is DOA. To compound the problems web developers face, this browser probably doesn't alter its UA string as part of the engine swap.

    Way to go, AOL. You should buy SCO and begin gathering all the stupid IT companies under one corporate umbrella.

  • Screenshot, with notes (Score:4, Informative)

    by Devil ( 16134 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @04:56PM (#10956450) Homepage
    I've put up a screenshot, with notes [flickr.com] on Flickr. Bash away.

  • Name coincidence? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Devil ( 16134 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @05:41PM (#10956977) Homepage

    Netscape used to be Mosiac Communications and their URL used to be:
    www.mcom.com

    Mercurial Communications developed the new browser and their URL is:
    www.mcomi.com

    Coincidence? You decide.

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