I think this looks a lot more like Netscape trying to take things apart similar to Mozilla, but why they didn’t specifically state this before people installed is a mystery. I’ve also noticed a number of changes, some not good, over the years with various versions of Netscape especially since AOL took over. As it stands, I was also thinking that Netscape 8 was going to replace Netscape 7.1 but now I have both and even less freespace on an already over loaded machine.

I’ll give it a whirl and see but who knows might just switch over to Mozilla Suite or the stand alone parts and Opera.

Only time will tell.

Netscape needs to throw this thing back in beta and work out the installation glitches before releasing it. I’ll know more once I spend more than 5 minutes with it.

These people went 2 different directions with Netscape and Firefox. Why are they trying to combine them again?

I downloaded 8.. removed 7.2 and lo and behold there’s no mail client..
and i’ve loss all email and address book

there was no information about this in the notes

previous netscape fan swiching to opera…

Has anyone else experienced this problem or is just me??

I’m sorry I didn’t catch your joke, the internet has never made it easy to detect sarcasm.

I do stand by what I said about the review being biased. A review is objective, and states both good and bad. Now, maybe Jeremy only had a bad experience, but it’s hard to believe he couldn’t find one good thing about it. In fact, it sounded more like an attack than a review, and many of the attacks simply didn’t have merit. Let’s really look at what he was complaining about:

“No, wait, that wasn’t the installer. It was just an installer that downloads the installer for you.”
Many valid app downloads do this, and it does have it’s advantages.

“ugly theme called “fusion”"
This, I agree with. But it’s a theme, and more will come out. Default FF theme isn’t exactly a thing to behold either, but no one is complaining.

“You are asked for your zip code and offered the chance to have some spyware…um, I mean, add-ons included with the browser (desktop weather, etc.).”
What a negative tone for a feature. How is this any different than Weatherfox or your weather widget asking for zip code?

“No, I don’t want to make it my default browser and off it goes.”
Again, another negative tone for nothing. Ever see a browser that does not ask this?

“Immediately upon launching, it opens about 7 or 8 tabs.”
I haven’t even heard about this problem from any of my friends or colligues. Maybe Jeremy’s case was extrememly rare, but based on the tone of the review, it’s hard to find credibility in the existance of the problem in the first place.

“There was no “first time notice” or anything telling me that the blue sheild is an un-protected site.”
Geeks figure it out anyway. Many normal people would hear about it or figure it out themselves. A few may even have read the explaination about it after initial setup while downloading: Yes, it was clearly in front of you. Anyway, it’s better than what any other browser is offering now so don’t bash it.

“One other thing I noticed is that when I logged into my Gmail account, it seemed like I was offered three prompts in the process of asking my if I wanted to save my username and password.”
Fill it out once, and only one dialog for autofill will pop up next time. Why blow it out of proportion?

“All in all, I think the browser is still suffering from too much fluff.”
Another way to phrase that would be, ‘the browser is already bundled with extentions that most people will find useful.’ But that would be too positive.

Now, for the good points that Jeremy made:
…

However, I agree with Jeremy, the shield thing as an anti-phishing security measure is a bad idea. It doesn’t tell the user much, unless the user was notified beforehand what it meant. A shield can mean anything, and how many people will figure on their own when they visit their first phishing scam site, that the non-lit shield means the site is dangerous?

If this helps get people away from using Microsoft’s IE, then I’m all for that. If it is easier for people to grasp over Firefox, that’s a good thing. Personally I’ll stick to Firefox because I like having the control it gives me to make it do what I want.

cliche: It’s time to grow up, that snide comment makes you sound immature. What’s wrong with constructively criticizing someone’s review? It’s not that hard.

I also had a problem with the fact that the first time I ran the browser after installing it (the beta is running on a seperate machine), it crashed on my and I received that error submission dialog.

I don’t want to say that I abide strictly to the Geek code. I wasn’t really against NS8 having the IE rendering engine in it.

I was really not trying to be too critical of the browser, just reporting my experience with installing it for the first time. The problems I had may be isolated, and that is fine.

#19 Should your opponent expressly challenge you to produce any objection to some definite point in his argument, and you have nothing to say, try to make the argument less specific.

I got the impression from your article that you already made up your mind about Netscape before even testing the browser by following the geek code too strictly: Hate MS, hate anything that’s not open source, and hate anything that might compete with our beloved Google or Firefox. Oh yeah, since this is forevergeek.com, I’ll add one more: Have an orgasm anytime anyone mentions Apple. Yes, I said Apple (twice now). Start your orgasm… NOW. (I wonder how much I’ll be moded for that one).

Yes, I did like the fact that I could start configuring it while it was downloading, but why not just offer the full installer as a download option? Why force the user to download a program that basically just downloads the installer for them?

When I first went to my Gmail account, it seemed that it asked me first if I wanted to save the user/pass information, then prompted me again with that whole Passcard dialog, then another prompt telling me about the Auto-fill thing.

I also noticed that the default engine it started up with was IE, not Firefox. I thought that was odd, unless for some reason it thought that whatever site I was viewing needed to use the IE engine, and switched it automatically.

The point I was making about the “shield” is that this browser is supposed to be big on anti-phishing stuff, yet here I was at a site that was clearly a phishing scam, and I got not visible warnings to alert me to this fact other than that sheild.