A new Mozilla-based version of Netscape released by AOL this summer ?
By glazou on Tuesday 30 March 2004, 15:24 - AOHell - Permalink
Fernando Cassia, who is usually a reliable source, has today an article about that. Weird. Really weird. Who at AOL is still able to release a version? And what for? Weird. Hey Fernando, sure it's not a 1st of April joke you posted too early?
Comments
Won't it create competition with navigator.netscape.com/ ?
Netscape revival? I don't think so, good question who will be able to release such a version?
It was also mentioned on www.mercurynews.com/mld/m... (in the middle somewhere) a few days ago. The article says a spokeswoman from AOL is confirming that there will be future releases of Netscape based on Mozilla.
mscmurf:
Well, it isn't very hard to make Netscape from Mozilla SeaMonkey, just replace red dino with the N logo and change some occurences of "Mozilla" to "Netscape" and make some minor tweaks to prefs.js...
Technically, any semi-advanced Mozilla user can do that...
But there are ICQ sidebars, Netscape Webmail support in MailNews and some other things, which are not so trivial things to change (ok not very difficult, but you need to know how Mozilla works for that probably).
This probably means, there are still to much netscape engineers employed by AOL. But this unfortunate situation will change. Up to now AOL celebrated each relase with a bunch of pink slips for the engineers. Why should it be now different? If you think about stupid management, think about three letters.
I think there are about 100 employees left in MV
400 or so according to the press in december when they dumped the last lot. notice they've got rid of all the corp. communications staff at MV now too (its all been centralised to dulles / ny)
A new training period is available at AOL ?
"navigator.netscape.com/&q...
ok, what the FUCK?????!!!!!
Yes, it seems that AOL has two teams (W and E coasts) working on two projects. One is Gecko based, the Other one is M$IE based... According to some people from AOL, it seems one is currently more advanced and feature promising than the other one... Gecko is still alive !
I always wondered why they were going to end Netscape anyway. I mean, all they have to do is add their aol and icq to the sidebar, and let the mozilla team do all the hard work. I have firefox on my computer, but I still use netscape from time to time.
No Daniel, it was not an April's fool. Netscape 7.2 is apparently coming, if one believes Anne Bent, VP of Corporate Communications at AOL. (703-265-2825).
Yes, the article was published around april's fools day but I've been sitting on the news since around March 15 when I got the official reply from AOL (it took me two weeks to publish it because I was too busy moving).
About the "why"... it's simple: development of Mozilla is now done by the Mozilla foundation, so the base cost is ZERO for AOL, they just have to keep the extras up to date (AIM/ICQ/Webmail/AOLMail/NSRadio).
Plus, the Mozilla 1.4-based Netscape 7.1 shares several security and privacy vulnerabilities recently discovered on the Moz 1.4 code, so AOL can't keep distributing Netscape 7.1 forever.
It makes good sense, imho. But then I'm not unbiased I'm the author of the SaveNetscape.org petition.
Thanks for the link and keep reading TheInquirer.net for the best IT news.
FC
Oh and by the way... Netscape "Desktop Navigator" (navigator.netscape.com) is a tiny win32 tool not related with the Netscape Browser, that's why the name was changed from "Netscape Navigator" (as it was on the beta) to "Netscape DESKTOP NAVIGATOR".
In fact, the "Desktop Navigator" respects the users' choice of the "default web browser" as set in the Windows OS, so if you have the Netscape 7.1 browser set as your default, and you use the "Netscape Desktop Navigator" whatever news you click on is opened in the Netscape 7.1 browser.
FC
Note to 'hum': fix your URL... nobody uses a quotation mark as a folder name. take it off and you won't get that 'page not found' thing.