Netscape 8.0 Beta

There have been rumors and screenshots of Netscape 8.0 Beta floating around for quite a while now, and I just found that the beta is now public.

At this point, you’re probably thinking: Netscape? I thought that company finally died? Well, you’re right, Netscape was bought out by AOL, and spun off, but AOL has continued releasing updates to the browser based on the Mozilla Suite. This latest version is a major departure for them, and that’s why it’s worth mentioning. Really, it’s a very interesting browser, with a few features that may make it worthy of your interest.

Keep in mind that this is a beta, and it’s Windows only, at this point. They’re using the code for Firefox 1.0 as their base, so there are some unfixed bugs (Firefox just released 1.0.1). You also need to read that license agreement carefully, during the beta, their TOS are a little invasive:

You agree that Netscape may periodically query your computer system, without additional notice to you, for information relating to your use of the Beta Browser [and] during the beta testing, your software will contain a specific identification number for the purpose of tracking the number of unique instances of the Beta Browser being used by our testers.

So, why use it?

Choose your rendering engine

Netscape 8 is special first of all because it’s the only browser that lets you choose your rendering engine, per-site: Gecko (the guts of Firefox/Mozilla) or Internet Explorer.

Yep, that’s right, you can choose to view pages using the Internet Explorer rendering engine. Not only that, you can specify that certain sites should always be rendered with IE. Now, I’m a Firefox convert, ok, I use it for all my surfing. However, I’m a member of a music club where I pay a small annual fee, and get all the music I could want, subject to the onerus requirements that: 1) I can only listen to it on my computers, 2) it expires when I stop paying, and 3) I have to use Internet Explorer to download it. Now, I can use Netscape.

Extensibility

Netscape has fixed it so that not only can you switch to the Internet Explorer engine, but you can load ActiveX plugins using the Firefox Gecko engine! (Yes, I know, there’s an ActiveX-enabling hack for Firefox, there’s a hack for everything with Firefox. And every time a new version comes out you have to re-hack everything because they break all their plugins. I’m actually tired of hacking Firefox). When you’re using IE, all the rendering-based plugins work, and the browser is based on Firefox, so all the standard Firefox extensions should work as usual.

Looks

The skin on the netscape browser is unconventional and slick, it puts your menus on the far right of the top bar with the window caption and the close/minimize/restore buttons. It skins the whole window, so it’s really pretty cool looking, even though I don’t like their colors. They also made it so that the reload/refresh button and the cancel button are the same button, which frees up more space on your toolbars.

In addition they’ve made it so that you can have multiple toolbars in the same space. For instance, in this thumbnail from the screenshot I linked above, you can see that there are at least five toolbars set up, the active one has a weather plugin and an RSS reader, as well as a webmail button that checks my GMail account automatically and logs me in automatically when I click on it.

Defaults

One of the nicest things about choosing Netscape (instead of Firefox) is that I didn’t have to run out and install half-a-dozen extensions before I could really use it. The TabBrowsing Preferences are built into the browser, as is the RSS feed checker and mail checker. Of course, there’s always someone out there who will claim that’s bloat, but then, Netscape’s never been about minimalism, and I’m sure I already mentioned that this browser uses two rendering engines.

Security

There are more security options in this browser than you can shake a stick at, but the most interesting thing is a beta program they are trying out where they will maintain a whitelist and a blacklist of sites. This list is ultimately maintained by you, on your computer, but is fed by a webservice which publishes a list of sites that AOL has determined are risky or trustworthy. When you visit a site, the little shield icon on the tab changes color from green to yellow to red to indicate the trust level of that site. There’s tons of options per site, from what rendering option you want to use, to whether you want to allow Java, Javascript, ActiveX, CSS, cookies, etc.

Summary

There’s no executive summary here. You make your own decisions. I’ve only been using the browser for a few hours, and I’ve had one crash. It’s in beta, so unless you’re into that, you probably want to wait. However, I’m quite excited about being able to test the websites I’m working on in both Gecko and IE in one browser, and I actually like the RSS headlines thing and the mail checker. All the tab options I wanted are built in, and it still uses standard Firefox extensions, so I can load up all my other add-ons. So far, I like it, but I’m certainly not ready to roll it out at work, and I haven’t even set it as my default browser yet

Similar Posts:

None Found