Netscape Navigator 9
Published on June 11, 2007 in Browsers Before Internet Explorer the most dominant browser on the market was Netscape Navigator. After losing the browser war to Microsoft, some serious missteps, and dropping the Navigator portion of their name Netscape became nothing more that a minor player in the browser scene. A fews days ago, Netscape released the latest version of their browser (Netscape Navigator 9), bringing back the “Navigator” name and changing the user interface to match the one used in Mozilla Firefox 2. In addition, with this new version, several new features have been introduced which are designed to make Netscape Navigator a more viable browser alternative.
Link Pad
Link Pad is a sidebar item that stores links which are dragged on it. After clicking on a saved URL in the Link Pad the link is then automatically removed. It is essentially a disposable bookmark system, keeping temporary bookmarks from your permanent ones and keeping everything a little more organized.
Mini Browser
The mini browser is another browser window which can be opened in the sidebar. It uses the browser’s sidebar functionality to allow a user to open two different web sites within a window providing the ability to view both sites at the same time. While this has limited functionality on a traditional monitor it looks to be useful on a bigger widescreen monitor.
Resizeable Textarea
A simple feature that allows the text boxes in a form to be resized for easier inputting of text.
Tab History
In Navigator when you make a link open in a new tab, all of the backward browsing history of that tab is copied to that new tab.
Netscape.com Related Features
Most of the other new features in Netscape Navigator center around integrating with the Netscape.com site which was recently changed to be a Digg like social news site. Netscape Navigator has been designed to be a browser that adds additional functionality for individuals who frequent the Netscape portal. Some of these features include an RSS reader that is specialized for stories from Netscape.com, a ‘Share’ button in the location bar which allows for quick submission of any link to Netscape and a ‘Friends Activity’ button which opens up a list of stories recently posted, commented on or voted on by your friends.
Add-ons and Themes
Because Netscape Navigator is based on Firefox all of Firefox 2’s extensions should now work in Netscape Navigator. There have been a few reports of extensions not working but generally speaking this seems to be the case. Themes on the other hand will not work cross browser between Firefox 2 and Netscape Navigator (Netscape Navigator’s default theme is available as a Firefox theme here).
Conclusion
In the grand scheme of things Netscape Navigator 9 is just a specialized version of Mozilla Firefox, much like other browsers such as Flock. Firefox users will feel right at home using Netscape Navigator but there is little reason to make the switch from Firefox to Netscape Navigator 9, unless you are a frequent user of Netscape’s services. As Netscape Navigator is a niche browser its success will depend on the success of Netscape.com.
Firefox users who visit sites using the IE7 rendering engine, Active X, et.al., may want to upgrade to the new Navigator because many of these sites currently are off-limits to Firefox. Because the IE engine is included in Navigator, and the functionality of Firefox is included, Navigator 9 offers a smooth and easily adopted browser without having to migrate back to Internet Explorer.
When will the the very utilitarian “Netscape COMMUNICATOR” EMAIL program reappear. This is why I continue to use the 7.2 version. Having the mail server down load and hold the email at one computer in a lock box is what I desire. The 8.x version completely ignored the mail server.