Installation is the normal Netscape procedure. Download a starter file, which you open, and then it downloads the main app files (35 megs!) while you set your prefs.
There’s an interesting Advanced Setting:
For trusted sites, the Netscape Browser sometimes switches to the Internet Explorere rendering engine to ensure maximum functionality for that site.
Trusted sites? Who says they’re trusted? Why Truste and Verisign do. They maintain a whitelist of sites that Netscape 8 (if you allow it) will open using the IE engine by default, ActiveX controls and all, I presume.
You get to choose whether or not to intstall Desktop Weather by The Weather Channel, and Real Arcade (by Real). (They’re listed in a scroll box, so there’s plenty of rooom for more “partner content”… is this the business model?) I won’t be installing either of them.
Running it for the first time presents you with the typical options to import settings from other detected browsers (I choose not to import anything); it also asks if you want it to be the default browser (no thanks).
The browser opens, and you have three tabs open immediately, all with Netscape-related content. Look in the lower left-hand corner and you can see an IE icon — presumably netscape.com is a trusted site, so it defaults to the IE engine. Clicking the icon allows you to reload the page with the Firefox engine.
The default interface is pretty cluttered with browser controls, search fields, content buttons (“Weather”, “Setup Email”) and a “Security Center,” which has buttons for “Netscape Security Center,” the pop-up blocker, “Autofill,” and “Clear the history of pages visited.”
Looking closer at the toolbar, you see you can scroll through custom sets of buttons and links — Personal, Local and News are predefined. They call them Trays. You know, as a developer, that would be useful. I could set up different multi-bars for different projects (but surely there’s already a Firefox extension for this?).
Anyway, that seems to be the gist of it. AOL simply can’t leave the Netscape brand well enough alone, I guess. It’s now a portal, an ISP and (stll) a browser.