According to Digital Online news, a Windows version of Mozilla using both the Gecko engine, and the Internet Explorer engine is under development. The article states that the browser is based off of Firefox, and defaults to Gecko, but in case a page is problematic with Gecko, “it takes two clicks to display the page using the IE engine.” Additional features include per-site preferences in regard to cookies, active x controls, and what appears to be a ticker for RSS headlines. The Firefox-based browser in tandem with Thunderbird are intended to replace the Mozilla suite-based product as Netscape’s flagship offering.
Netscape Browser includes IE Engine
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“AOL has released a preview version of a new Netscape Web browser that is based on the open-source Firefox browser, but also supports Microsoft’s IE browser engine.”
firefox can already do this with this extension
https://update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firef…
A more complete article about the same thing, with a picture of the new netscape @ http://news.com.com/New+Netscape+embraces+Firefox%2C+IE/2100-10…
Could someone clarify please, is there a division of some company somewhere that has the right to be called Netscape?
Or is this just AOL using a different tradename so MS won’t sue them for not using IE all the time?
Nice write-up on MozillaZine:
http://www.mozillazine.org/articles/article5691.html
IEView is not the same thing has what this new Netscape does: this new beta has the ability to switch to the IE rendering engine within itself (and also reloading the page) for compatibility sake.
“this new beta has the ability to switch to the IE rendering engine within itself (and also reloading the page) for compatibility sake.”
IEview can do this too…
The title of the news article here is:
“Netscape Browser includes IE Engine”
However, this is not quite correct. Netscape does not have access to (AFAIK) nor do they actually include the engine itself. They are merely embedding the rendering component of IE inside Netscape that uses whatever version of IE is currently installed on the system to render pages.
Over the last few months I have seen a major drop in sites that have problems with Firefox. With the exception of MSN.COM it is getting downrigh hard to find sites that do not work with Firefox. MSN though is an entirley different story — many parts that worked well just a week or two ago (Games for example) now do not work at all – Same games worked a week ago and now require Active-X to load. These same games at Yahoo! still work just fine with Firefox. H##l some of these same games (gamehouse.com) even work with Firefox on Linux. So why do you think that Mr. Bills site can’t manage to do what it did just one week ago! – I tell friends that suddenly are having this problem with Firefox – it not Firefox its Mr. Bill – and that they should take their business to Yahoo!.
http://www.asetek.com/
“this new beta has the ability to switch to the IE rendering engine within itself (and also reloading the page) for compatibility sake.”
IEview can do this too…
I run IEView and all it does is relaunch IE with whatever page you are viewing in firefox.
The new browser will have the IE rendering engine embedded and will be able to remember preferences for which engine you’d like certain sites to render with.
Pretty slick.
Boy, you weren’t kidding. What’s the deal with that?
If you think about it it’s not really that bad. It just looks bad because there are so many frames that didn’t load because of ASP errors, which you would expect. It’s not any worse than a one frame ASP error. I’ve seen worse rendering from IE.
That means “how to be out of online business, the easy way” =)
” I run IEView and all it does is relaunch IE with whatever page you are viewing in firefox. ”
in the end there is no difference
” I run IEView and all it does is relaunch IE with whatever page you are viewing in firefox. ”
in the end there is no difference
As it sits now I have to manually right click and then hit “View this page in IE”.
If the new netscape browser contains both rendering engines and will remember that evertime I visit http://www.whatever.com that it should use IE instead of moz then its an improvment and a difference.
So yes in the end there is a difference.
” I run IEView and all it does is relaunch IE with whatever page you are viewing in firefox. ”
what version if ieview are you using..?
funny, it renders fine in Firefox if you set the User Agent to Internet Explorer. This sight is doing different things based on which browser it gets (doesn’t display at all in Safari). basically, the people who developed that site should be blacklisted from web development for the rest of their lives (not for doing things differently, but for seemingly intentionally breaking for non-IE browsers).
what version if ieview are you using..?
0.84 which according to firefox 1.0’s autoupdate is the latest. Is there a newer version or are features available in this plugin that I’m not aware of ?
“Same games worked a week ago and now require Active-X to load.”
http://www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/plugin.htm
It’s just because they’re COMPLETE IDIOTS who wrote a website in VB ASP without knowing Visual Basic. Don’t worry about it.
They’re using IIS, so I’m sure the site will be defaced and/or destroyed after a few hours. (not a threat, just a statement)
http://www.asetek.com/ works fine in FireFox if you change your useragent to internet explorer – apparently some script (probably server-side) refuses to send the pages if the useragent isn’t IE…
silly web-designer problem… I hate that.
If Firefox was using the IE engine, wouldn’t you become just as vulnerable to the same exploits as regular IE?
Netscape Browser Prototype is Insecure
Just letting everyone know: the new browser prototype issued by “Netscape”, which is based on Firefox 0.9.3, does not include any security updates created since that release. Don’t install it on friends’ computers and don’t use it on untrusted sites.
Even worse, users are reporting that it embeds IE via a plugin accessible to any website. That makes it vulnerable to both 0.9.3 and IE security holes.
You can verify yourself by checking the Mozilla Known Vulnerabilities page with the “Netscape Browser”. Click on a recent bug number and run its testcase. (For example, the Javascript clipboard access testcase worked, and the extremely wide BMP crashed the browser) You can also watch a random website embed IE by visiting this example. Users of the latest Firefox release may click all of these links in confidence.
This seems like a good idea to get more people using the Gecko engine by default. But the interface scares me.
n the end there is no difference
It makes a lot of difference if ieview opens a different application (Internet Explorer) and loads the page in that application or the browser can switch engines on-the-fly and reload the same page ‘in itself’.
Something different:
Is this good or bad? If I want to deploy some spyware, I fond out how to make my page not display correctly in the new AOL browser, have it switch engine to IE and then I can exploit that engines weakness, perhaps using ActiveX.
Plus, sites that rely on IE will receive less complaints from users because it’s still viewable using the ie engine, therefore, the makers could be less inclined to adopt standards in their site.
So while it’s a nice touch for AOL users, it is perhaps a step back on the way towards standards and safety?
the slogan should be:
Lightweight Mozilla, now with the security of Internet Explorer.
So, instead of increasing market share of Gecko to make webdevelopers make real websites that work accross platforms and browsers, they’ll just encourage the same laziness “oh well, netscape can use the IE thing anwya and render them perfectly, let’s not bother making real code”. bah.
I wouldn’t use AOL or Netscape even if you paid me to do so. The fact that it’s using the extremely insecure and easy to hack IE rendering engine will make it as insecure as IE.
“using the extremely insecure and easy to hack IE rendering engine will make it as insecure as IE”
Even worse! A malicious website could:
1. try exploit(s) for rendering engine A, and
2. if not successful, ruin layout for engine A, so
3. user is tempted switch to engine B, where the site could
4. try exploit(s) for engine B
This browser might end up to be even less secure than IE.
This incentive bad web development/design –non standard one.
Change your user agent to IE, and go to http://www.msn.com
then change your user agent to Mozilla and go to http://www.msn.com
compare
With IE useragent, site looks WMP10-like
With Mozilla Useragent, site looks… dated…
UserAgent Switcher for Mozilla and/or Firefox
http://www.chrispederick.com/work/firefox/useragentswitcher/
Switching your UserAgent is the worst thing you can do… The page-statistics only display IE-users then and the webmasters don’t make sites for firefox. They didn’t include it in firefox because the marketshare of mozilla looked only more little because of this.
the GUI of this new Netscape is worst as ever design wise.
In what way are standards pushed if people used only Gecko and no longer a mixture of Gecko and IE? All sites would become Gecko-specific – it would just move the monopoly.
… ok the bonus is of course that I can view at the source code now to see how it works. At least something.
I’m running firefox. MSN.com at first glance appears fine. I check my hotmail with firefox. I clikced on a few linkes on msn.com. It all seems to display fine. Is there a specific url on msn.com that messes it up?
If not, I wonder if its a language/location based preference? Like, msn.com tries to be ‘special’ with US English or something like that? I’m in Canada BTW and I don’t think i’ve ever changed my user agent (no extensions for it install either)
Yamin
“Change your user agent to IE, and go to http://www.msn.com
then change your user agent to Mozilla and go to http://www.msn.com
compare
With IE useragent, site looks WMP10-like
With Mozilla Useragent, site looks… dated…
UserAgent Switcher for Mozilla and/or Firefox”
(Confirmed.)
Ah right, time to sue Microsoft. They pulled this very joke earlier with Opera…
Although I agree that combination of two engines sums their vulnerabilities, don’t blame just IE rendering engine.
IE is much more than rendering engine, many problems are caused by other IE components and bad default settings. Most annoying and (potentially) dangerous things like popups, browser hijacking, running unsigned (or not approved or just suspicious) controls etc etc can be avoided externally – by configuring IE control (renderer) settings and optionally by preprocessing html input, maybe even running it in very limited security context and so on.
Of course this doesn’t mean that IE renderer is ideal, far from that. I just wanted to say that “hybrid” browser won’t automatically include all of IE problems.
I don’t like hybrids anyway
Ah right, time to sue Microsoft. They pulled this very joke earlier with Opera…
This is incredibly “anti-competitive” of them. Why are they risking it? Something should be done, though I doubt that it will any time soon ($$$$).
Okay, I like the thought dat Mozilla will win a sue en collect some money to improve their products.
But it’s also a stigmatic way of getting new visitors for MSN.com. If you are using Mozilla the site look is outdated so you are going to visite some other site. Else (in case of IE-browser) you might like the site and come back.
Darwin called it the natural selection of species. MS might call it natural selection of users. (Why should they try to attract people who don’t use their products?)
Lighans
In what way are standards pushed if people used only Gecko and no longer a mixture of Gecko and IE? All sites would become Gecko-specific – it would just move the monopoly.
Gecko aims to support standard, MS does not, that is the difference. We don’t have IE specific websites because developers are writing for one browser, we have IE specific websites because developers are writing for one crap browser.
Has anyone actually *looked* at this thing? It’s probably the worst UI monstrosity in the history of browsers! You’ve got a toolbar, a tiny address bar, a *second* toolbar on the opposite side of the first for some bizarre reason, a menu bar placed in the top right hand corner for no apparent reason, a toolbar which mixes up Netscape-pushed links, a search box and some MORE toolbar-type options, then an ugly-looking row of tabs below it which are impossible to distinguish at first glance from the Netscape-pushed links in the row above.
Somebody needs to be taken out and shot, repeatedly, in the head.
The old Mozilla 7.0 and 7.2 were actually fine – they were just Mozilla with a little Netscape branding round the edges. This thing is…hideous.
When comes to natural selection, there are no artifical laws against monopoly.
The latter were invented by humans, to fix certain issues that monopoly creates.
I’m not sure whether there is law against of what Microsoft are doing particulary with MSN. Is that really a case of monopoly – forcing their sites to work only under IE? I mean MSN is not the only online messenger/mail/games site, and not the most used one. For example if you have Ford, you are going to be serviced by Ford, right?
Actually I’m not sure, so if someone is willing to explain?