Netscape 8.0 Beefs Up Mozilla Firefox
Based on Mozilla Firefox 1.0, this beta of Netscape’s newest browser offers support for both the Gecko and Internet Explorer rendering engines. A new Site Controls feature lets users enable and disable features like ActiveX, JavaScript and cookies on a site-by-site basis (the browser includes self-updating whitelists and blacklists of safe and dangerous sites). The new Multi-Bar functionality lets users have more on-screen widgets than ever before, including Live Content like RSS feeds, weather forecasts and map searches.
The new Netscape Browser 8.0 is a more commercial, Netscape branded, heavy version of the open source Firefox browser which has taken an impressive market share with the target of reaching 10% by the end of the year. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still holds a large chunk of the web browser market.
However, latest stats show that the growth of Mozilla’s Firefox browser has slowed down. In the duration of five weeks leading to 18 February Firefox growth was quite modest at 15% compared to earlier growth rate of 22%. That growth was helped when the Mozilla Foundation launched the GetFirefox initiative, which gained amazing support from the web community. Donations were used to start a massive publicity campaign, which included full-page ads in national newspapers.
Critics and market analysts say that the slump in the growth rate is quite expected considering most of the users expected to switch have already switched to the alternate browser. And with the recent announcement from the software giant Microsoft regarding the upcoming launch of the Internet Explorer 7 version, it might take more efforts from the Open Source Community to generate more excitement in the segment. Showcasing the Firefox browser in Netscape’s newest offering may just be one step.
