# Netscape 8



## rhaythorne (Jan 12, 2004)

Just been giving Netscape 8 a go. First impressions? Not bad, not bad at all









*Main Window with tabbed browsing*










During installation, watch out for these two screens and make your choices carefully









*Choice of Rendering Engine and Feedback Program*










*Choice of optional Partner Software to install*










Supposedly Netscape 8 is based on Firefox but it has the neat ability to switch to using the IE rendering engine for those sites which don't display correctly in Firefox, such as my own! This sometimes appears to occur automatically but can easily be achieved manually by right-clicking on the page and choosing to "Display like Internet Explorer" or "Display like Firefox". A neat trick, although I wonder if, from a security point of view, it may be the worst of both worlds...

...we shall see









So far, I rather like it


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## Silver Hawk (Dec 2, 2003)

rhaythorne said:


> ... for those sites which don't display correctly in Firefox, such as my own!
> 
> 
> 
> ...


All sites that don't correctly display in Firefox should be immediately closed down.









Firefox is the best W3C compliant browser out there...


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## rhaythorne (Jan 12, 2004)

> All sites that don't correctly display in Firefox should be immediately closed down


Congratulations, you've just freed up a large proportion of the Internet. Based on my own surfing habits about 40% of it


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## Stan (Aug 7, 2003)

Got a link Rich?

I'm too lazy to look for myself.
















Plus, I'm doing other "watch" research.


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## Silver Hawk (Dec 2, 2003)

rhaythorne said:


> > All sites that don't correctly display in Firefox should be immediately closed down
> 
> 
> Congratulations, you've just freed up a large proportion of the Internet. Based on my own surfing habits about 40% of it
> ...


You must be visiting much more dubious sites than I.









In my experience, it is more like 3% or 4%









And I thought you'd approve (and conform) with your Linux/Open Source tendancies


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## rhaythorne (Jan 12, 2004)

Stan - here, you go: Netscape 8

Hawkey - I've always been amazed by the number of people who say they don't encounter any problems viewing sites with Firefox. To me it seems like almost every other site I go to doesn't work properly







Maybe, as you say, I just happen to visit a lot of incompatible sites. I tried Firefox when it first came out and, to be honest, I found it to be totally unremarkable. Yes, there was the much-hyped "security" aspect but that's been rather undermined in recent weeks which was not entirely unexpected. I tried Netscape 8 with a few demo exploits yesterday and it falls foul of a couple but is otherwise pretty good I reckon. It's the one browser that just might drag me away from Deepnet Explorer









When I first put my site together Firefox didn't exist. It was a learning experience and still has all sorts of ghastly problems and bad design elements which can only be fixed by a ground-up rebuild







I originally designed it to be compatible with Netscape 4 and later tweaked it to work with IE (which is still used by 80% of my visitors).

But you've given me an idea. Just maybe I'll blow up my .co.uk site (I still have a .net mirror) and starting building a new version on that domain. Hmmmm...


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## Silver Hawk (Dec 2, 2003)

Rich,

You do whatever you want









At home I use Firefox and have done so ever since 0.9.









But at work, it is IE all day long...not just as a user but as a IT architect and developer. We make extensive use of IE-specifics (







) especially in relation to client-side XML data islands and XSLT stylesheets...but also with CSS Styles (Microsoft has some nice extensions in this area ...more







).

But it's all going to catch up with us, and it *is* going to end in tears







....there a real push in my company to adopt open web development standards but it will take years to accomplish.

If you do decide to use Firefox, try this extension. Very useful developer's toolbar









Cheers

Paul


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## rhaythorne (Jan 12, 2004)

> Rich, You do whatever you want


Thanks, I will











> If you do decide to use Firefox, try this extension. Very useful developer's toolbar


Just tried it out. Me like







That will come in handy, cheers!


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## Stan (Aug 7, 2003)

Thanks for the link Rich.


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