AOL's Netscape team has opened its doors to the public, releasing the first beta of the revived Netscape Web browser. Based upon Firefox, Netscape version 8 focuses on security and protecting user privacy, and supports rendering with both Mozilla's Gecko and Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser engines. Other features include:
Tabbed Browsing: lets you have multiple web pages open in one window. This feature is great for organizing and freeing up desktop space because it files your web pages in a series of tabs
Site Controls: gives you more ways to make your browser secure than any other browser
Multi-bar: lets you customize up to ten different browser toolbars you can access with a single click
Form Fill/Passcard: makes remembering your site passwords and filling out information forms on site simple
Live Content: lets you have one-click access to information important to you
Some of the known issues that exist with Netscape Browser 8.0 Beta include:
Use CAUTION when storing passwords on a shared computer.
Some crashes still exist in versions of Windows 98.
Automatic detection of RSS feeds requires switching the engine to Netscape.
Setting the tab preference for 'link in page' to 'add new tab' is not always obeyed.
There are cases where certain JavaScript elements will fail to appear on some pages.
The deficiencies noted in FireFox 1.0 are inherited in Netscape 8 BETA in most cases.
Media plug-ins: various versions of some popular audio and video plug-ins are not yet fully functional with Netscape 8 BETA.
Importing and blocking of cookies can sometimes operate incorrectly.
Automatic form fill is disabled for sites with forms other than login and password fields.
There are issues with the synchronization of the browser's session history when a browsing session includes the use of both rendering engine.
The 'auto-complete' dropdown that appears under web page text fields and offers to complete your text entry (when you have previously enter text into that filed) does not function in the BETA.
There are known intermittent crashes that can occur for various reasons. Stress lab testing is on-going throughout the BETA period to isolate and remove the sources of incompatibility that cause the crashes to occur.
The Netscape Browser 8.0 Beta is compatible on Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 98 SE, ME and requires a minimum processor speed of 233 MHz, 64 MB RAM, and atleast 35MB of free hard disk space.
