When Netscape 8.0 came out a few days ago, I decided to read about its improvements. Well, I was surely surprised when I saw that it gives you the option of rendering “trusted” pages (as to how it determines what to trust, I have no clue) with the Internet Explorer rendering engine. It didn’t take long before this gave me an idea however. I decided to install Netscape on a copy of Windows that did not have IE installed. From there I would see how Netscape ran. As you can tell from this screenshot, I did this with 98lite. Interestingly enough, it turns out that you must have Internet Explorer before you can even install Netscape 8.0!
LOL
I guess this means no Linux support!
Netscape was once a great multi-platform web browser. Now it is windows only, and was released with a major flaw.. Just junk.
So why not just use FireFox? One word, Banks. Bank’s online banking sites are built by the lowest bidder. And the lowest bidder only will write his site for IE 5+ or Netscape (Insert Latest version here).
A Bank site I tried to login into with Firefox 1.0.4 told me I needed to use IE5 or better, or Netscape 7 or better!
Now us Linux users are left out. I would rather they take out the render in IE stuff, and release Netscape 8 for Linux too.
Oh well…
Can’t this feature be disabled?
this is probably because, IE is tightly integrated into the operating system. therefore, you need IE for any stupidly simple task such as installing a new program.
I was just wondering why there wasnt a release for Mac OsX. I thought they are working on it. But it seems it depends on Windows’ IE lol
Funny Browser wars are back
To fisher:
What bank are you using? I know the bank that I use here in Chicago, I can log into their website just fine using Firefox. You might want to look for a new bank to do business with.
They early bound the netscape browser to the IE COM interface.
If they do not detect it during install, it will surely fail when it runs.
I think its just fine that it requires IE. Netscape is more of a concept browser these days than a standard and this is an interesting concept having a browser with 2 different rendering engines embedded in it.
So how about microsoft and netscape teaming up to gain back as much market share as possible in the IE/NETSCAPE VS. FIREFOX browser wars…
Or did M$ dump some money into netscape if they agreed to do this so that some market share would be pulled from firefox therby making IE seem to have gained market share…
or….. aw heck netscape could roll over dead tomm and i wouldnt care a bit
that was the most pointless thing i’ve evern seen someone submits himself to
netscape clearly says that the IE rendering engine is simply a call to the activeX IE control. nothing else! just use the IE control and atach some hooks to it.
it’s been like that since the last version. so, what’s the point?
i think firefox has well surpassed netscape now (even in usage by grandmas) so why should we care?
Hrm my bank works with Safari just fine. In fact, last year I reported a “problem” with the transaction page and Safari. They replied stated it was an known issue and a solution was under way, it was shortly fixed later. So not all banks require IE and since my does not, it keeps my business.
Fisher: if it works with Netscape 7, it’ll work with Firefox – previous Netscapes were based on Mozilla, it’s the same engine…
I think site you mean simply look for word ‘Netscape’ in your UA, so try to change UserAgent string, see http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/useragentswitcher .
I don’t know who you bank with, but Washington Mutual online banking has no problem with Firefox.
I remember when Netscape was the browser. Now its more of a giant advertisment, and joke.
It is sad to see Netscape die this way, but at least we have Firefox. And it runs on anything.
I use Firefox at Bank-One (Chase) and Wells-Fargo and it works just fine.
I think that changing banks and letting them know what why you are changing could prod them into fixing their site. Let them know that there are customers out there who choose not to use IE and want a standards compliant website so that users of Opera, Firefox, Mozilla, IE, Netscape, Konq, etc. wont have a problem.
Basically, all this means is that Netscape 8 requires Windows 98 or higher. In other words, your 10-year-old Windows 95 copy won’t work. Or, in this case, your hacked version of a 7-year-old copy of Windows won’t work.
Come on guys, this isn’t exactly an onerous requirement. Anyone running Windows on a Pentium II or faster machine already has this.
This is like complaining that Safari won’t run on a version of OS X that you’ve hacked to somehow uninstall Webcore. Or complaining that Konqueror requires KHTML.
Netscape 8 for Windows isn’t the right browser for people running Linux. Uh, duh. But it makes sense for some people who are using Windows!
I applaud Netscape’s software engineers for taking advantage of an already available OS component and API, and using it to build a better browser. Just like, say, OmniCab does for OS X.
The KDE team is working on a version of Konq that is switchable between KHTML and Gecko engines … I’m sure everybody here would applaud that. But Netscape gets flamed for doing the same thing with a browser engine that makes sense for people who like to access their work e-mail via OWA or use their company’s IE-only intranet.
LOL!
And I have shown “its” features to people! Try to explain them no that they DO HAVE TO INSTALL IE for IE rendering.Geeez.
Goodbye Netscape.
Is damn slow but I have said,what a heck, two browsers in one, worth the hassle.Not to mention no Linux… that’s a pitty. Must go back and recheck that box in Firefox , ya know, default browser on Windows.You see, at work I have to have Win XP… to use the intranet effectively.
I constantly see people complain about being unable to access their bank websites and I’ve personally never had a problem (had accounts with maybe 2 or 3 different banks since I’ve been using Firefox). My personal opinion is that if your bank is so ignorant in that regard, I’ll think twice about trusting them with my money…
Citibank works fine with firefox on linux.
Weird… SunTrust’s site works just fine with Firefox, as did the old NWAFCU site (now Wings Financial FCU).
I guess a credit union isn’t a bank, though, huh? 🙂
Are you flippin’ kidding me? IE was the centerpiece of that whole antitrust case against Microsoft. And they STILL haven’t released a version of Windows without it. Basically, they just got their wrists slapped. So not only is it (IMO) a legal problem, but IE is just a giant Swiss cheese of exploitable holes, some still surprisingly waiting to be exploited. I guess you didn’t notice that when Firefox had a few security problems less than a month ago, not even a week went by before they were patched is a giant feather in their hat. Who needs another IE-based browser? Not me!!
(Better browser? That is highly debatable.)
“So why not just use FireFox? One word, Banks. Bank’s online banking sites are built by the lowest bidder. And the lowest bidder only will write his site for IE 5+ or Netscape (Insert Latest version here).
A Bank site I tried to login into with Firefox 1.0.4 told me I needed to use IE5 or better, or Netscape 7 or better!”
I have several bank accounts, credit cards, and other financial organizations that I deal with regularly online. All of their sites I use with FireFox. I have had no difficulties at all with any financial institute online with Firefox.
It sounds more like an issue of YOUR bank not getting their act together.
It’s true that you can’t install NS8 when it doesn’t detect a version of IE on your system, but….
only if you use the online installer
If you go for the full download, you’ll find you can use NS8 without having IE installed.
Try it!
Strange because here in SA, and were as dominated by MS as anyone, Standard Bank works fine on Opera, Safari and Firefox. Never tried it with IE though.
You missed my point — I was only pointing out the fact that Netscape 8 requiring IE isn’t a big deal or even a deal at all, because every Windows PC made in the last 5 years already has IE installed.
The original author is complaining because Netscape 8 won’t work on some machine he has used 98lite to rip IE out of a 98SE install. Talk about a rigged example.
The news item isn’t about the Microsoft antitrust case. It wasn’t even a review of Netscape 8.
For people who have to use IE to access certain websites, maybe the option of being able to use just one browser and maintain one set of bookmarks, and to browse in “Firefox mode” 95% of the time is an improvement over the other options of switching back and forth between browsers all the time, or browsing full-time in IE.
National City’s online banking works perfectly with Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, IE, etc… Although it doesn’t seem to work with Netscape 4.8, but that’s okay.
As for Netscape 8 refusing to install without IE, I find that tragic! What the heck is AOL thinking? And why did they even waste their time coming out with Netscape 8? I’ve tried it, it’s crap! Not to mention ugly as sin.
I find it very sad to see how far AOL has brought down the Netscape name. Of course they killed Netscape in the first place.
So really I’m not too surprised by how screwed up Netscape 8 is. It’s just the usual quality you can expect from AOL.
… saved me once when a credit card website wanted IE for their signup page. A lot of these bank sites don’t really *need* IE, it’s just that the developers are lazy and don’t test with anything else, and sometimes just check for the User Agent string to make sure you are not using a browser they didn’t test.
LOL!
Funny thing. About 70% of the time that I find the homepage of the site demands that I need IE to browse it, if I look at the HTML and point a little further into the site it runs well with no problems. So it is the site creator/site creation software that puts that in.
Lately. I have been running FireFox for BeOS with no problems except one site. But before I was running NetPositive, for those who know it this browser it is missing just about everything, so I find it funny that many sites work fine with it once you get pass the home page that demanded that you needed the latest and greatest IE to run.
Chase(on of the largest in the world) and BankOne work 100% fine for me in Firefox on Linux, including on-line bill pay etc.. In fact, I do all my banking in Linux using Moneydance which autodownloads transactions from these banks and also handles billpay seamlessly inside the application through these banks as well. My TDWaterhouse brokerage also works great in Firefox and moneydance.
Maybe you people need to get a new bank, there are LOTS to choose from. In fact I would say that any bank that does not work correctly with firefox/linux will be the “odd man out” at this point and deserves to be dumped.
You may laugh, but one nice day i failed in attempt to install Mozilla on system without Internet Explorer.
It was radical version of 98lite, with full IE cleanup (inlc those IE components) which were used as part of shell/Windows Explorer).
This was happened due new “feature” – notification, which blinks mozilla window placeholder in taskabar in case of some events. And this feature exists only in IE-integrated shell.
So you cannot use Mozilla at really safe, MSHTML free system, like Win95.
That’s price of using MS “features” and good example of “lock-ins”
Who is the stupid person behind that project?
…it’s the issue that the installer doesn’t give you the option of whether you want “dual rendering” (which would be missing or permanently turned off if your system didn’t have IE) or not. If they put that in the installer, then it makes the Mac OS X and Linux ports a lot easier (since their installers might not even have to ask the question and just have the dual rendering turned off throughout).
With this release, AOL/Netscape have basically thrown in the towel against MS and IE and said “we need IE because we don’t believe in the quality of Gecko to take market share away from IE”. Plus the security nightmares of ActiveX have made what was a fairly secure browser (Netscape 7.X) into a browser that’s actually one of the worst out there (because it’ll have the security issues of ActiveX, IE’s Trident and the Gecko engine combined to deal with). In short, it’s a Frankenstein joke of a browser that no-one who is security-minded could ever recommended to anyone.
“I decided to install Netscape on a copy of Windows that did not have IE installed.”
Call me stupid. But how did you get a copy of windows that does not have IE installed?
Windows 9x did not have the IE rederer integrated into the OS the way XP does. You could, with a bit of effort, strip it out of 98, hence 98Lite. In 95 IE sat in the application layer.
Granted it’s not going to bother anyone with a < 5 year old computer, but it does make Netscape/AOL look kind of dumb.
Just to clarify, there is a newer version of 98Lite that allows WinXP users to remove IE as well.
Thats all I got to say, Netscape has fallen to a new low on this one……
I used to have this problem with Mozilla browsers, but not anymore. And no, the sites I’ve visited hadn’t updated. It seems like it’s a browser identification thing. All I know is everything seems okay now.
Even Launch works.
Did M$ fund the parent company?
In 95 IE sat in the application layer.
Yep, though if you installed IE 4, you had the option to install all the active desktop/shell enchancement stuff, which basically made it Win98 for all intents and purposes. I used to like to do this with Win95 OSR2, there was a trick you could use for a while to install active desktop when installing IE 5 on Win95. But the last time I tried, it looked like Microsoft has stopped offering that part for download.
have a look http://www.linux-noob.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1113
check the before and after screenshot, see what a difference the switcher makes, and this is on the same site that just ‘didnt work’ with firefox
cheers
anyweb
Great, this rumour is still going around
I have NO problem with ANY banks website under Firefox on BeOS, without the user agent modified.
Banks websites make them a lot of money. Its crud like radio stations (98fm.ie, spin1038.com) that provide sites that don’t work with Firefox and give you ‘Please Upgrade to IE’ messages. Sites designed by overpayed designers, not software engineers, basically. A banks site has to have some level of actual engineering in it…
is that AOL has decided that it would be “cool” and “useful” if when a site was “incompatible” with Gecko, then they could render it with IE.
Hi I have been reading about problem with banks and almost every1 says that every banks work ok with firefox, well my bank doesnt.
http://www.banamex.com.mx
when you open the main page everything is ok but when you try to get into their e-bank called BancaNet then it told you that you need IE or Netscape 7.1+. their web page for their e-bank is, this is a Mexican bank part of Citigroup.
https://boveda.banamex.com.mx/serban/
or click in BancaNet from the main page. i really hate this. I even notice that the page http://www.banamex.com.mx it doesnt open at all when im using Linux, it says it couldnt find the domain but if I change to IE then everything is ok. I dont know if is my system or is a problem with their page.
i would complain to the bank and/or switch banks
Hi Edgar,
To make it work with your bank simply install this extension:
http://downloads.mozdev.org/useragentswitcher/useragentswitcher_loc…
Save the text below into a file named “useragentswitcher.xml” and with the option dialogue import it and overwrite the existing useragents.
<useragentswitcher>
<useragent description=”Internet Explorer 6 (Windows XP)” useragent=”Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)” appname=”Microsoft Internet Explorer” appversion=”4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)” platform=”Win32″ vendor=”” vendorsub=””/>
<useragent description=”Netscape 4.8 (Windows XP)” useragent=”Mozilla/4.8 [en] (Windows NT 5.1; U)” appname=”Netscape” appversion=”4.8 [en] (Windows NT 5.1; U)” platform=”Win32″ vendor=”” vendorsub=””/>
<useragent description=”Opera 7.54 (Windows XP)” useragent=”Opera/7.54 (Windows NT 5.1; U) [en]” appname=”Opera” appversion=”7.54 (Windows NT 5.1; U)” platform=”Win32″ vendor=”” vendorsub=””/>
<useragent description=”Netscape 7.0 (windows XP)” useragent=”Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.1″ appname=”Netscape” appversion=”5.0 (Windows NT 5.1 en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.1″ platform=”Win32″ vendor=”Netscape” vendorsub=””/>
</useragentswitcher>
<pre>
<useragentswitcher>
<useragent description=”Internet Explorer 6 (Windows XP)” useragent=”Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)” appname=”Microsoft Internet Explorer” appversion=”4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)” platform=”Win32″ vendor=”” vendorsub=””/>
<useragent description=”Netscape 4.8 (Windows XP)” useragent=”Mozilla/4.8 [en] (Windows NT 5.1; U)” appname=”Netscape” appversion=”4.8 [en] (Windows NT 5.1; U)” platform=”Win32″ vendor=”” vendorsub=””/>
<useragent description=”Opera 7.54 (Windows XP)” useragent=”Opera/7.54 (Windows NT 5.1; U) [en]” appname=”Opera” appversion=”7.54 (Windows NT 5.1; U)” platform=”Win32″ vendor=”” vendorsub=””/>
<useragent description=”Netscape 7.0 (windows XP)” useragent=”Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.1″ appname=”Netscape” appversion=”5.0 (Windows NT 5.1 en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.1″ platform=”Win32″ vendor=”Netscape” vendorsub=””/>
</useragentswitcher>
</pre>
without the <pre></pre> tags, why doesn’t this preview work?
thanks for you answer, I already try with the “user agent swithcher” that you talk about it here, but when I change the user agent to say im using IE, inside Firefox it doesnt work, it looks like it open the page because it doesnt tell me anymore that I need IE but the web page is just blank without anything, so i guess there is still something wrong. so i guess i have to keep using IE for my bank.
I’m disgusted with Microsoft AND Mozilla. There’s absolutely no reason to have to fake a web site into thinkin that it’s a different one. The fact that we can even do that to render pages means that there’s no intrinsic benefit to using IE over another browser. The Web was ‘supposed’ to be an open standard, but Microsoft has attempted to screw that up too. Makes me sick!
My bank, Bank America, works fine with Firefox.