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Tony Hoare
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HP fires a salvo in the browser wars
Tue, 10/04/2005 - 13:23 — kebernet
news.com.com/~com/com.com says:
In a move that harks back to the browser wars, Hewlett-Packard plans to ship Netscape's Web browser on new consumer PCs and notebooks starting early next year.
The agreement, announced Monday, is the first browser distribution deal with a major PC maker since the end of the browser wars in the 1990s, according to Netscape, a division of Time Warner's America Online subsidiary. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The company in May released Netscape 8, a browser with features to protect users against online scams.
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Comments
RE: HP fires a salvo in the browser wars
The only news here is that there is actually a "Netscape 8"?
RE: HP fires a salvo in the browser wars
I just dowloaded that bastard to see what is going on over there these days, figured it would just be FF 1.0.
Its slick looking and its obviously Gecko based, but it has some "use IE 'engine' on trusted sites" option on by default and it install ALL KIND OF spam when you use the default install (some real player shit, that thing is just abominable these days, and some weather.com app, and more)
The browser itself I have to again say is slick looking, but no one would install this over normal FF knowingly and on purpose (unless out of curiosity - as I just did ;)). Its an older rev FF with all sorts of spam stuff built in, no thanks.
RE: HP fires a salvo in the browser wars
Personally, I find the switch between view modes (Gecko vs MSIE) to be a killer feature myself. You can also run it along side FF, which you can't have multiple FF's open in windows on it's own.
I like it personally. Check out the settings for the toolbars and such. It's got a lot of cool features.
The Real stuff doesn't really bother me that much.
RE: HP fires a salvo in the browser wars
Ok, the more I use it the less hostile I am towards it. I mean I still really dislike the default install adding other software and that type nonsense but . . .
I do like the "site controls" tab to set trust settings very conveniently per site. The little "if I trust this site and its rendering wierd show it using the IE rendering engine" button sounds like a good idea, but dangerous and of course this thing only has a Windows rev.
The look and feel, the tab bar innovations (the old style Mozilla button to click to open a new tab instead of ctrl-T or right click - is nice and of course the aforementioned "Site Controls" on every tab) and a few other shortcut buttons (on of off popups and so on) are nice tweaks to Gecko/FF.
Still dont think I would recommend it, but its not as horrible as I first thought.
RE: HP fires a salvo in the browser wars
Ok, I made the prev comment before I read your last comment. I like it more now that I use it some, and I can see the usefulness of "switch to IE" but it still sounds sketchy, maybe I am an idealist but I would prefer to just not use sites that dont render properly with valid HTML rather than have to click on "switch to IE engine". That said I do understand the utility of it back in reality.
I like some of the customizations, but I dont like that its Windows only (maybe there are plans to release more revs).