SillyDog701

[James]

I know... I know. I've gone down this street before. But I like to periodically dredge this subject up so bear with me. Here's a series of questions that continues to pester me. Take your pick or tackle all:

What exactly is the purpose of Netscape 8?

Is the plan to continue to keep it updated so that it is a reasonably safe alternative browser?

Is there anyone amongst us who has it set as his/her default? Why?

For those of you who actually have it installed on your systems, do you find yourself making greater or less use of it from day to day?

What do you like/dislike about it?

Is your experience that it is slower at rendering websites?
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I think the question that plagues me most is the first. For the life of me I cannot seem to grasp why Netscape continues, given the success of Firefox and Seamonkey. Perhaps someone here can enlighten me.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1

[Fulvio]

James,
exactly, I can't tell you, but as AOL own the name Netscape, they can do whatever they want with it. and, they are doing in a half hearted way. Otherwise they would have not flung in a browser-only without giving a reasonable hint on how it connects with mail. I think that AOL is doing a disservice to whoever tries it. I see a lot of posts of people who are surprised/shocked that that Netscape has no mail.
I sent a numbers of feedbacks to the project letting them know what I think about it.
I may have said somewhere in a past post that when I had AOL, and they were fumbling with the atrocious NS6-based type program, and many testers were terrified at the thought that AOL would come out with such a monster, asked to have, at least an option to use the IE-based program. I had suggested that they come out with a program which would allow you to use either format. I am sure that other people had the same idea. May be that is why AOL came out with this thing.
Plans to continue? It took three years for AOL to come out with NS8.x.
They should update NS7.2, at least.
I am using NS8.1, only, to be able to answer questions. It is not too bad, but they messed up Firefox, and AOL does not even accept NS8.1 at music.aol.com.
Compared to Firefox, I don't like anything about 8.1 . I detest all the Tab which sprout at the slightest provocation. I thought I had their extravagant Tab Browsing under control with 8.0.x, but not anymore with 8.1.
I don't think that it is slow at rendering any particular websites, but it sure uses up memory. I thought that 1.5.0.1 was bad with 80-90 MB. Today, I used 8.1 to visit three typical website, checked Netscape and Yahoo Webmails, sending one e-mail from each, and send another feedback. I was up past 125MB of memory used. I am using 17MB with Kmeleon.
Do you think that I like 8.1?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.13) Gecko/20050914 K-Meleon/0.9

[Andrew T.]

As far as I'm concerned, the purpose of Netscape 8 is a way for AOL to push its proprietary services through watered-down brand recognition and as a way to capitalize on the popularity of Firefox without directly endorsing or (gasp) bundling Firefox itself. There's no prize given to anyone who counts the number of times AOL sprinkles the word "Firefox" around its Netscape 8.x documentation.

Will they keep it updated? AOL and their subcontractors appear to be making an effort to do that, although there doesn't seem to be much point in doing so since there is no compelling reason to use it. Which brings me to my next point...

The user interface is non-intuitive, is highly unconventional, and looks like a billboard. The "View as IE" feature defeats the purpose of the browser. It only runs on some Windows systems. It violates most every historical hallmark of Netscape Navigator (such as speed, simplicity, and cross-platform compatibility) from its heyday. In any case, Mozilla Firefox took over Netscape's role long ago as the leading browser from a common codebase, leaving "Netscape" 8 as a solution looking for a problem.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win95; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20060321 Firefox/2.0a1

[Fulvio]

I can summarize it with one word. Duh?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20060320 Firefox/2.0a1

[Antony]

Netscape 6 was a failure, at least, not until Netscape 6.2.x.

As for Netscape 8, they are still working on it.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/417.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/417.9.2

[Fulvio]

The difference is that Netscape6 was pushed into the market before it was ready, and it was something quite new. AOL has, seriously, considered to use a program based on NS6. The testers did not have the patience to see that an AOL7 Gecko, based on 6.2.3 was not bad at all. So, AOL made a deal with Microsoft. AOL never intended to use Netscape as their browser, as some people misinterpreted, but rather the backbone of the program. Anyway AOL Gecko, in some form, I believe, is still used in Macs, and Compuserve.
I still have mail folders and address book from the now defunct AOL Communicator, basically a mail client, based on some kind of Gecko version.
The difference is that NS6 was built in-house, and new and improving. AOL dropped the Netscape division when it became redundant.
It is possible NS8 was developed as an alternate to the IE-based AOL Explorer, which has many of the same feature found in NS8. NS8 may be improved, but it may just be dropped without notice. AOL is farming out its development, after all.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Sunsalamander Firefox/1.5.0.1