Back in February, I posted: Netscape 9 Announced. Now, four months later Netscape Navigator Beta 1 has been release. Yes, they have resurrected the Navigator name in this version. Remember, Netscape 9 is built by AOL/Time Warner (not affiliated with Mozilla) off the Mozilla Fx 2 rendering engine (Gecko 1.8). You could almost call Netscape 9 a “power user’s” version of Fx 2. Besides the standard, Session Management, Spell Check, etc. it also has many other standard features which would require extensions in Fx 2:

• Resizeable Textarea – allows you to make a textarea larger or smaller
• URL Correction – fixes common URL typos automagically
• Link Pad – a notepad of sorts where you can drag links to
• Tab History – keeps a separate ‘History’ for each tab
• Sidebar Mini-Browser
• Restart Netscape
• Sitemail Notification
• Throbber -As seen in Netscape 7
• Combined Stop/Reload Buttons – Saves space on the toolbar
• In-Browser Voting
• OPML Support
• News Tracker
• Friend’s Activity Sidebar
• News Menu and Sidebar
• Support for any Fx 2 extension including IE Tab and Tab Mix Plus.

I been hearing lately that Fx is getting ‘bloated’ with all the ‘standard features’ Mozilla has been including in the newer builds. There are many folks who would prefer to see Fx the way it was in the ‘old days’ when it was small and compact. However given Mozilla is going to have more competition (Opera includes lots of standard features) now in the ‘Power User’s’ Browser market this is likely not going to change.

News Source: CyberNet News >> CyberNotes: Netscape 9 Beta 1 Debuts

Update: Corrected parent company from Mozilla to AOL/Time Warner.