NETSCAPE UNVEILS NEW WEB BROWSER

THURSDAY, MARCH 3 2005 @ 04:55 PM

I just finished installing the beta version of the Netscape 8.0 web browser, and it looks pretty cool. During installation, I was able to import not only bookmarks, but my browser history, preferences, passwords, etc., from any of the other browsers I have installed in my workstation. It also comes with a little weather gadget and ready for RSS feeds, but according to this ZDNet report, security has been one of main focus of this release.

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RICHARD LEGGETT

MARCH 3 2005 @ 05:26 PM

Seems ok, but it really is just an AOL style (weather, films etc) bloated version of Firefox, using small icons doesnt actually free up any space as with Firefox hmm. Clicking "get themes" takes you to the Firefox page. Menus on top right instead of left?..brave! That's kind of like putting scrollbars on the left, which makes a lot of sense if you've ever studied the history of scrollbars, well at least for LTR languages. One good feature though.. hitting the big X top right closes one tab at a time, sometimes hit it by accident in Firefox and close all the tabs at once. Very confusing. Still it does immediately jump in front of IE due to the underlying engine.

RL

MARCH 3 2005 @ 05:29 PM

Just remembered one more thing, a bug?? Right click the tab shield to add a site to "trusted sites" in "site controls", and it switches the rendering of that site to IE style, from the NS/FF style. No idea why!

OSCAR TRELLES

MARCH 3 2005 @ 05:43 PM

I'm still checking it out... but I did noticed that it sends you to "Mozilla update" to get themes, and that thing with the trusted sites... how does the engine change protect me from anything?

Also, the toolbars aren't flexible as I expected. I eliminitaed the personal bar because it all seemed so cluttered, but I would like to have the weather thingy visible, but there's no way to put it on the main toolbar, or am I missing something? One thing is for sure, I'm not convinced that the whole preferences management is very usable.

OSCAR TRELLES

MARCH 3 2005 @ 06:21 PM

I got it now. What happens is that in the preferences IE is set as the default rendering engine for "trusted sites", which I guess shouldn't be the case. I'll try submitting a bug on that.