Netscape 9 available now

AOL has released the final version of Netscape 9, based on the same Firefox 2.0.0.8 code, an update to be released later this week.

It doesn’t show much change since Beta 1 I reviewed in past June so here’s a quick list of the new features:

• URL correction for common addresses mistypes. (URL Fixer review)
• Link Pad, a sidebar where you can drop links and keep them apart from your bookmarks. Somewhat similar to what starring will do for Firefox 3.
• Sidebar Minibrowser, which in practice, allows to browser two sites at the same time side by side. (Split Browser)
• OPML support for importing and exporting web feeds. (OPML Support review)
• Textareas are resizable. (Resizable Textarea review)
• New tabs inherit the history of the current tab.
• A combined stop/reload button as part of a visual refresh to the default theme. (Netstripe for Firefox)

So it is pretty much Firefox bundled with a selection of extensions and the added benefit of combined testing and QA.

I still find hard to recommend Netscape unless its extensions selection is very similar to yours. Besides that and from past experience, Netscape usually takes a while to catch up with the latest Firefox security and stability updates. So as usual, users will have to balance the pros and cons of going with a derivate browser.

Netscape 9 release notes. Download Netscape, available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.