Netscape
I’ve always had a soft spot for Netscape, but not for any reason. I never used the browser except for testing webpages in, never used the mail client or the news reader or the HTML composer. The version of Netscape’s browser I’m most familiar with is version 4, and that familiarity is borne of contempt. Yet I still like to hear about it when a new version or a new upgrade is released. It’s a browser that just won’t die.
My first experience with Netscape Navigator was early on when I got online for the first time, back in ’97. Computer magazines all told me that I should use Navigator as it was by far the superior browser (we’re talking about version 3 at this time), but I hated it. It looked ugly and clunky with its unattractive 3D buttons compared to Internet Explorer’s flat toolbar, and so I used Internet Explorer 3 instead, moving to IE4 when I upgraded to Windows 98. Netscape 4 failed to appeal as well — again, it was ugly, and had adopted a grey and teal colour scheme and looked as if it had been designed by, well, computer scientists.
So, years later, after AOL bought up Netscape and set about dismantling it completely, turning it into nothing more than a little-used website portal and search engine, and the “not quite as ugly as Navigator 4 but still actually quite ugly anyway” Mozilla-based Netscape has been and gone, we find another attempt being made, this time basing it upon Firefox. A last hurrah — let’s see what it looks like.
Sweet zombie Jesus, that’s ugly.
What on earth are they thinking? Did someone at AOL just look at Firefox and say “You know, this browser, it’s simple for the casual browser and extendable for the power user — but I think it needs more crap. Can we do anything about that?”, and then a small army of AOL minions got busy. Gone is the standard Windows look and feel — instead we have Neoplanet-era curved windows, with a nicely bitty edge for that cheap and tacky GIF feel. The Menu bar is on the right instead of the left where you expect it to be, sharing the titlebar space. The dimple effect and teal colouring appears to have been stolen from a circa ’97 website background and serves to clutter the interface even more. The two scrolling news tickers (which don’t even scroll at the same time) are distracting and pointless. It’s Netscape, and it’s still ugly.
But, I won’t go on. For a more in-depth look at this prototype, I suggest you read “First Look at Firefox-Based Netscape” over at mozillazine.org. They conclude:
“With this prototype, Netscape have taken the lean and mean Firefox and created a browser that’s… just not as good. They’ve added far too much clutter (the Tab Browsing panel in Options should go straight to the Interface Hall of Shame) and features such as the Passcard Manager are less streamlined and more confusing than their standard Firefox equivalents. Site Controls is an interesting idea but most users are simply not going to want to fiddle around with per-site settings when they could be doing useful browsing. The idea of Security Modes is laughable: Netscape Browser should always be secure. The decision to offer Internet Explorer’s Trident as an alternative rendering engine, while pragmatic, is an insult to the heritage of Netscape and may set the cause of standards evangelism back years. There is some promise though. Form Fill looks genuinely worthwhile and the weather forecast feature is both useful and discreet. The News Ticker could also be beneficial to both Netscape’s users and its business interests, were it not so annoying and were there not so many of them (who needs two news tickers anyway?). Overall, the Netscape Browser Prototype is a poorly designed piece of software, though one that is built on a solid foundation and has some interesting ideas.”
As I said at the start, I have a soft spot for Netscape. I’m well aware that what we call Netscape today has very little (if anything at all) in common with the Netscape of the olden days (a Netscape that some mooted as being able to buy Apple, just to integrate Navigator with the OS as a way of competing with Microsoft), but I still think that the browser has an important use; despite Navigator’s browser share of the market being almost nothing, people still know the Netscape name, and I still see websites that tell me I must be using Internet Explorer or Netscape to use their pages (mostly e-commerce sites). It may not be pretty, but any user using Netscape is still another user not using Internet Explorer, and I can’t see anything wrong with that.
I’m also interested as to what’s on AOL’s mind with this. They never (as far as I know) exploited their purchase of Netscape, continuing instead to use Internet Explorer as the base for their own browser, yet here they are again with a fresh attempt. Perhaps they intend for Netscape to become a major player again. We’ll see.