[ Thanks to Chris
Halsall for this link. ]
“It’s been a little more than two years since Netscape released
their browser source code into the hands of the Open Source
community and became known as the Mozilla project. This week, with
a fair amount of excitement, Netscape released the first browser
based on the Mozilla code-base, Netscape 6.0 Pre-Release 1, or
NS6PR1.”
“Somewhat later than many had hoped, this release is important
both in demonstrating to Netscape users what the near future holds,
and to reaffirm the commitment to the Mozilla-based browser by
Netscape’s new owners, AOL. It’s also important to realize that
this release is very much an early beta (some might argue late
alpha) version, so not everything works exactly the way it should,
and the browser can crash frequently.”
“Not only was the browser effectively re-written from the ground
up, but it is now a highly customizable, cross-platform, standards
compliant and completely open software architecture upon which just
about anything can be built. The Mozilla team have fulfilled
the original Netscape promise: middleware which can allow the OS to
disappear.”
“Is NS6PR1 a challenger to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer? Not
yet, but it will be soon. And I suspect the Mozilla technology will
be finding it’s way into many applications, since you can’t beat
the licensing terms. And if AOL choose it as their default browser,
Netscape could very quickly regain the lead in browser share.”