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Netscape 8 Beta Pushed Back to March

By Nate Mook, BetaNews

February 17, 2005, 3:22 PM

America Online won't be issuing the first beta of Netscape 8 as expected this week, pushing the public release back until March. The company says it needs more time to prepare its revived browser, which is based upon Mozilla's Firefox code base and focuses on protecting users from malicious Web sites.

In January, the Netscape team released a minor update to its prototype Web browser that brought the code base up to Firefox 1.0. Netscape, which has been available to a limited group of testers since November, was originally built atop Firefox 0.9.3.

As first reported by BetaNews, AOL tapped Mercurial Communications to help rebuild its Netscape browser brand early last year. The company hopes to build upon the success of Firefox and bring its users a safer browsing experience under the familiar Netscape banner.

AOL had scheduled a February 18 beta to open Netscape's doors to the public, but development is taking longer than planned. The delay is unrelated to any specific bug or problem, sources said.

"We have an excellent beta candidate, but we wanted to spend a little additional time to polish it before making it publicly available," a company spokesperson told BetaNews. "We expect that a beta will be publicly available within the next couple weeks."

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By Caleb

posted Feb 17, 2005 - 11:59 PM

All they've done is change the UI a bit to have the Netscape feeling, other than that it's still Firefox.

Score: 0

By Squire72

posted Feb 18, 2005 - 12:45 PM

They added the Trident (IE) rendering engine as well... and made it the default engine for any trusted web site.

Wonderful - a version of Firefox that works with Windows Update and breaks any site you trust that uses the web features where Gecko runs circles around Trident.

Score: 0

By jessshaun

posted Feb 18, 2005 - 1:10 AM

True, at first I HATED the Netscape Prototype as they were calling it. But as the release date for Netscape 8.0 grows near, it's looking better and better.

I for one will stick with Firefox. It's a great browser. Netscape 8.0 still has a few annoying bugs, otherwise I would at least consider using it.

Score: 0

By smbtw

posted Feb 19, 2005 - 11:03 PM

netscape 8.0 is my D browser and i feel is the best so far and yes it is still in beta the best

Score: 0

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