Just what we all needed, the absolutely new Netscape 8 comes out, vulnerabilities are noticed out of the gate to which Netscape quickly and quietly patches to 8.1, and then Microsoft gets word of and publishes that Netscape-which allows a user to switch between the Firefox and Internet Explorer engines to view pages-breaks Internet Explorer in the process.
Why am I not surprised?
Seriously-Netscape has a proud, long tradition of breaking stuff, and in my frank opinion the last decent browser they produced was the Netscape Communicator 4.x series. Netscape 6 and up tended to be bloated, over-featured, slow, and buggy applications that were the dread of many IT professionals who were forced to deal with them. Regardless, getting back to point, the folks at AOL (who bought Netscape) have managed to put together a browser that breaks the XML rendering capabilities of Internet Explorer, which will render some websites completely unviewable in Internet Explorer as long as Netscape 8 is installed. Now normally I’m all about browser competition, as it can only mean more features and more functionality for users, but AOL’s official statement is absolutely wonderful:
“This issue affects a very small number of users who visit sites that require that advanced technology.”
That’s customer service for you. What? Problem? Well, it only affects people who USE that, duh! Meanwhile an official fix IS on the way. The new Netscape life cycle is off to an amusing, if not predictable, start.
[ http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,121023,tk,dn052705X,00.asp ]