Netscape 8.0

Okay, I've had my fun jousting with you Firefox users in the past. I'm one of 7 Netscape brand loyal users out there, and I excitedly anticipated the release of Netscape 8.0. When it was released, I put it on both of my machines and I used it full time. Then I started having the occasional crash, so I started opening up my old Netscape browser for sites that I knew were problematic. Then I had problems with my Bloglines RSS reader, namely i couldn't get the links in the frame to the left to open up in the main frame. Since I always have Bloglines up when I'm working on the net, this was problematic. On one machine I was able to resolve it, and I continued to use Netscape 8.0 about 90% of the time. On the other machine, every time I shut down Netscape, I seemed to lose the setting which allowed Bloglines to work correctly. So on that machine, I began using my old Netscape almost exclusively. Since I'm a bit of freak about continuity between my two machines, I began to use the old Netscape exclusively on both machines. It's probably been a month since I even opened Netscape 8.0

8.0 needs work. There were a lot of bugs that Netscape should have worked out before they released it. In addition to the crashes and the frames problem on Bloglines, I found the RSS reader built into the browser less than user friendly, which is too bad because that was one of the main advantages I thought 8.0 had over the 7.X browsers.

I'm still not a Firefox convert, though, and probably never will be as long as I have a stable Netscape to use. When I open up my browser, I don't want to spend time customizing it. I want it to have a bevy of features that I like, and those I don't need I just won't use. Firefox is fine in it's bare bones version, but I just don't feel like adding the additional features I want. When I open up the browser, I go to town surfing. Fiddling and customizing is not and will not be part of the equation.