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TravisNewman
December 1st, 2004, 06:47 AM
*sigh*
You can tell that AOL owns Netscape.

Taken from the article referenced below,
The new Netscape is based on Firefox, but with a twist - it includes support for switching to Microsoft's IE engine.

Now, I know that many users will find this useful, and it will be useful obviously, but it just doesn't exactly feel right, does it? I won't go into the reasons why, honestly because I can't really put my finger on the exact reason. It's just a gut feeling mostly. But, one main reason Firefox is a success is because it doesn't have the security issues of IE, which this obviously will (though I'm sure there will be more security safeguards).

Screenshots can be found here:
http://gemal.dk/blog/2004/11/30/netscape_browser_screenshots/

Betanews Article:
http://www.betanews.com/article/Outsourced_Netscape_Merges_Firefox_IE/1101831853

amoser
December 1st, 2004, 06:52 AM
your right, it doesn't feel right to me, but what do I care, I only have Ubuntu on my computer (and girlfriends). SO I guess that I will not be trying out this version of netscape because there is no why Microcrap will let their buggy IE engine be ported to Linux.

~Alan

TravisNewman
December 1st, 2004, 07:01 AM
They might be able to... since it's just using the activex control, Microwhatever Communications that actually did the development on the new netscape may be able to find a way to get it to work under Linux. But. I have a feeling that AOL cares about Linux users less than they may have at one time (since they had netscape versions for Linux after AOL owned them), so I doubt they really care. They're using this great cross-platform framework for Netscape and AOL Communicator, and they aren't even using it near it's full potential.

That being said, I don't even think I want to try out this version. If there's a way to remove the IE engine I will... though I don't guess viruses and spyware that infect IE will be able to in Linux (that is, if there's a Linux version of course, which I doubt).

Sorry if this post is a bit incoherent, but I'm quite tired.

HungSquirrel
December 1st, 2004, 07:02 AM
All the dialog boxes, etc. look okay, but the browser window looks like utter crap. What were they thinking?

TravisNewman
December 1st, 2004, 07:06 AM
I desperately hope that the interface will change.

or maybe I don't. The interface would turn off enough people so they'd just flat out use Firefox and not have to worry about the IE engine at all.

jdodson
December 1st, 2004, 07:21 AM
stick a fork in it, netscape is done my friends. it had its day in the sun, now that day is over. thank you netscape for the codebase, now we have mozilla firefox and few are going back. plus, why would you install the aol version of firefox, it just contains nagware anyway(or at least the last version did anyway).

adbak
December 1st, 2004, 05:05 PM
By the time that the new Netscape/IE hybrid comes into its own, Firefox will have surpassed it (outfoxed it, if you will). I was thinking about switching to the hybrid if it was better than Ff, but then I remembered how great Mozilla was and surely they'll be able to stay one, or several, steps ahead.

BWF89
December 1st, 2004, 10:44 PM
That is about the ugliest GUI have ever seen. Thanks for the offer but I think I'll stick with Firefox...