Netscape Browser 8.0 Beta

I'm using the new Netscape Browser beta that was released this morning. While it's vastly improved over the release candidate circulated last November, it's still essentially a mucked-up Firefox 1.0. This isn't all that bad, since this makes for the best Netscape release ever (even in beta form), but it's a very convoluted and complex browser, and in no way is this recommended for computer newbies of any kind. It's difficult to configure and awkwardly designed.

First, there's the toolbars. It took me a moment to realized that the Stop and Reload button had been combined. I suppose this makes sense, but what's the point, really? There's an integrated search bar to the left of the location bar, but it's set to Netscape's search engine, and cannot be changed. Ignoring the browser's Passcard functionality, which combines form filling with a password manager and which I have no interest in using, we come to what Netscape calls the Multibar.

There are five default trays that can be toggled in the browser-width multibar via tiny numbered tabs under the navigation controls: 1. a weather drop-down menu, a webmail tab (set to Netscape webmail, of course), a business ticker, a "Shopping" link, and a link for beta feedback; 2. Three separate news tickers; 3. a "Local" tray with more weather, a maps pull-down, and a Yellow Pages link; 4. your imported bookmarks; and 5. "Blank." Got all that? Seem needlessly complicated? It is.

This is further confused by the Customize Toolbar dialog, which, like Firefox's, allows drag-and-drop, but now has four tabs to categorize the scores of buttons and several drop-down menus for individual toolbar settings (remember, there are six now). The Options window is even worse. There are seven catagories with a total of fourteen pages of obscure, badly documented checkboxes, blanks, and pull-downs. Keep in mind that Netscape Browser has maybe two or three major features over Firefox (not counting common Firefox extensions), yet there are three times as many things to worry about in the options and preferences windows. People, I've been doing this for ten years, and at first I was a bit bewildered by this thing.

But the good news is that very little actually needs to be changed from default. It imported my Firefox 1.0.1 bookmarks, cookies, home page, history, etc., and I simply set the multibar to my bookmarks and left it there. The default theme is tad too far on the teal side, but it's clean and certainly unique. The 8.0 beta has also retained Firefox's Live Bookmarks, one of the premier features of the browser, and the primary reason I stick with Firefox day-to-day over Mozilla, Opera, K-Meleon, etc.

On the beta issues side, there seems to be an issue with the rendering engine that keeps certain pages (like the Google front page) from being drawn until the entire page has been cached, if at all, a problem exacerbated by the combination of the Stop and Reload buttons. 8.0 beta also does not incorporate the Gecko branch updates in Firefox 1.0.1, which includes some major security fixes. So this browser is not yet ready for full-time use, but it looks promising, at least as promising as the new Opera 6 beta 2.

Still, unless you really need various news, stock, and weather tickers and don't want to fool with installing Firefox extensions (which, I have to point out, is easier to do than configuring the tickers already integrated into Netscape), Netscape Browser remains obsolete in the face of Firefox 1.0.1. It's a nice try, but re-branded browsers are just rarely worth the effort. I'll stick with it for a while, and I'll let you know if I change my mind.