Is Netscape 8 a firefox based browser ?

imported_Kiwi

Golden Member
Jul 17, 2004
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Not quite. The founder of Netscape, Andreasson, was a primary designer of Masaic, the first graphical browsing program, which is and was a free program from whatever university it was designed at. Andreasson could see the profit potential of the Internet, and he created the original Netscape browser, with plenty of enhancements over the original Mosaic. All of the Netscapes up through 3 or 4- some, were based on the original Netscape code. Andreasson sold to AOL, and for the most part, Netscape upgrades halted at version 7. If the Netscapes after 4 or so contained Open Source code, the browser was still highly differentiated from the Mozilla that predated FireFox (slower and much more bloated).

Meanwhile, the Mozilla group also started with Mosaic as a basis, but because they continued to offer Open Source (free) distribution, I think that the original SeaMonkey Mozilla contained plenty of Mosaic code. Firefox is the enhanced Mozilla browser, and "should be" vastly superior to anything with any touch of AOL's mishandling on it.


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StormRider

Diamond Member
Mar 12, 2000
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When you go to the "About Netscape Browser..." menu item, it says "Netscape 8.04 based on Firefox" so yes, I think it is based on Firefox now.
 

igowerf

Diamond Member
Jun 27, 2000
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Originally posted by: Kiwi
No, it's not. The founder of Netscape, Andreasson, was a primary designer of Masaic, the first graphical browsing program, which is and was a free program from whatever university it was designed at. Andreasson could see the profit potential of the Internet, and he created the original Netscape browser, with plenty of enhancements over the original Mosaic. All of the Netscapes up through 7- some, were based on the original Netscape code. Andreasson sold to AOL, and for the most part, Netscape upgrades halted.

Meanwhile, the Mozilla group also started with Mosaic as a basis, but because they continued to offer open source (free) distribution, I think that the original SeaMonkey Mozilla contained some Mosaic code. Firefox is the enhanced Mozilla browser, and should be vastly superior to anything with any touch of AOL's mishandling on it.


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Actually, Netscape 6 and 7 use code from the Mozilla project. I believe that Netscape started the Gecko layout engine as a complete rewrite for NS 5, but eventually scrapped the project and made the code open source. A few years later, Netscape 6.0 was released based off early Mozilla code.

Firefox, Mozilla, and Netscape 6+ all use the Gecko layout engine.
 

CTho9305

Elite Member
Jul 26, 2000
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Originally posted by: Kiwi
All of the Netscapes up through 7- some, were based on the original Netscape code.
4.x. 6+ were Mozilla / the re-write.

Meanwhile, the Mozilla group also started with Mosaic as a basis, but because they continued to offer open source (free) distribution, I think that the original SeaMonkey Mozilla contained some Mosaic code.
You have a strange version of history ;)

 

SunnyD

Belgian Waffler
Jan 2, 2001
32,674
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www.neftastic.com
Netscape 8 is Firefox 1.x. 100%... everything including the theme manager. The one thing they did add is an IE compatibility mode which you can turn on so that rather than using the firefox rendering engine will hook and use shdocview.dll directly - in essence, IE.
 

AnyMal

Lifer
Nov 21, 2001
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In a way, yes. But technically speaking, they're both derivatives of Mozilla