Netscape 9 available now

Published: October 16th, 2007

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.

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5 Comments on “Netscape 9 available now”

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1. Samuel
October 17th, 2007 at 8:16 am
I stay way from Netscape like the plague. Back in the day, it was an excellent browser and we have it to thank for Firefox. But now, its just an AOL-owned copycat. Sure its good. But I’d much rather use Firefox. AOL as an ISP would be wise to offer Netscape as their default browser, rather than that horrific IE-based mess they currently ship.

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2. Terry
October 19th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Hello, Why does firefox need so many
tracking cookies? :-(

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3. Paul Sierak
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Hello,

I installed Netscape 9 on a PPC G3 based Mac running operating system 10.4.10 and it doesn’t show the mail icon in the lower left corner of the window, as in Netscape 7.2. Has this feature been dropped in the new version?

Thank You,
Paul

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4. Paul Sierak
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:27 pm
Hello,

Sorry about the comments on Netscape. Your Firefox is a nice product, that I use. I had too many windows open!!!

Sorry again.
Paul

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5. Paul Sierak
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Hi again,

The new Netscape 9 doesn’t have a mail feature, so I’m deleting the program.

Bye,
Paul

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