Issues with Netscape

[Bo Aakerstrom]

Some time back I installed Netscape 8.0 and since it kept causing my PC to crash repeatedly I un-installed it same day!

On their forum there are a few posts regarding this problem, but as I get the impression quite a lot of people still use this browser I'd like to have a version installed.

Does anyone know which is the latest stable version of it? They have a few to choose from on their site.

Any comments would be helpful...

[George]

Originally Posted by Bo Aakerstrom

Some time back I installed Netscape 8.0 and since it kept causing my PC to crash repeatedly I un-installed it same day!

On their forum there are a few posts regarding this problem, but as I get the impression quite a lot of people still use this browser I'd like to have a version installed.

Does anyone know which is the latest stable version of it? They have a few to choose from on their site.

Any comments would be helpful...

I was using Netscape 7.2, when 8.0 came out. It was horrible, with too many problems to enumerate. I uninstalled and stayed with 7.2. It is a very nice browser, as good as any, but I'm not sure if it has any security issues.

Regards,

George

[ktinkel]

Originally Posted by Bo Aakerstrom

I get the impression quite a lot of people still use [Netscape] I'd like to have a version installed.

According to a browser market share monitoring site (OneStat.com), Netscape doesn’t have a considerable share.

Interesting: this place breaks out browser usage in categories — on the web, in the U.S., in Canada, in the U.K. (but not for the E.U., alas). The top 5 shown for on the web are:

85.45%  MSIE
11.51%  Firefox
 1.75%  Safari
 0.77%  Opera
 0.26%  Netscape

Several other sites show similar percentages for MSIE, Firefox, and Netscape.

The numbers for USA, Canada, and U.K. are quite different. MSIE shares in those groups are 81%, 79%, and 94% respectively. For Firefox, 14%, 17%, and 5%. There are more Netscape users in the U.S. and Canada as well: 0.8 in the U.S. and 0.7 in Canada. But Netscape doesn’t generally have as many users as Opera.

And we have no idea how many people have multiple browsers; these figures evidently just show those in use.

[Bo Aakerstrom]

Depressing stats, unless you are Mr. Gates, that is!

Perhaps I should have asked one more question from the outset: Since Netscape seem to use the Gecko rendering engine, does it display pages as FireFox does or are there any fundamental differences apart from the "skin"?

[iamback]

Originally Posted by Bo Aakerstrom

Perhaps I should have asked one more question from the outset: Since Netscape seem to use the Gecko rendering engine, does it display pages as FireFox does or are there any fundamental differences apart from the "skin"?

As far as I know it uses the Gecko engine for rendering - so if you're just interested in how pages are displayed, don't worry about how that rendering engine is "packaged". That said, just like Firefox used to lag behind a bit compared to Mozilla in what version of the engine is used, as far as I know Netscape lags behind even more.

I still have Netscape 6.2 installed (a gecko version) and a few older versions but never bothered to install newer versions - I have quite a colection of Mozilla versions that should do nicely for testing (a well as few Firefox versions). Maybe I'm missing something - but I don't think I am.

[Bo Aakerstrom]

Originally Posted by iamback

Maybe I'm missing something - but I don't think I am.

Not likely...

The only reason was indeed to see how it rendered pages, so I'll give it a miss - at least for now.

On a more personal note: Even if I use Firefox (with the button for switching to IE's rendering engine on the toolbar) when building web pages, I just can't get used to using it for everyday browsing.

I mostly use Opera, but I'm visiting a few sites on a regular basis that does not work very well using it, and I must admit that I'm using AOL Explorer for those sites.

[dacoyle]

Originally Posted by Bo Aakerstrom

On a more personal note: Even if I use Firefox (with the button for switching to IE's rendering engine on the toolbar) when building web pages, I just can't get used to using it for everyday browsing.

I couldn't live without it! ;-> Tabbed browsing at its best.

On Netscape, I looked at version 8 and didn't like it much. I test in N7.2 and 4.7 (just to make sure the lack of CSS doesn't make the pages unuseable.)

[iamback]

Originally Posted by Bo Aakerstrom

I must admit that I'm using AOL Explorer for those sites.

As long as that remains an exception we'll forgive you.

[ktinkel]

Originally Posted by Bo Aakerstrom

Perhaps I should have asked one more question from the outset: Since Netscape seem to use the Gecko rendering engine, does it display pages as FireFox does or are there any fundamental differences apart from the "skin"?

I have seen some, usually small, differences among the gecko-based browsers — and more with Netscape than with Mozilla, Firefox, or Camino. The latter three are being developed more or less with the Mozilla group; Netscape is being developed by AOL; not sure how much its team collaborates with the others.

The three Mozilla browsers are not exactly in sync but usually behave pretty much alike, eventually.

[terrie]

bo: Does anyone know which is the latest stable version of it? They have a few to choose from on their site.

I'm using 7.2 and find it quite stable...

Terrie