Making a list, checking that we’re not on it
MozillaZine reports that the next Netscape 8 beta will have a blacklist of known bad sites, where active content and cookies will be disabled by default, and a whitelist of known good sites, where as NetworkWorldFusion reports, not only will scripting and cookies be enabled, but ActiveX will be enabled, because the good sites will display in the embedded IE control, rather than in Gecko.
In some ways, I’m sympathetic to the pragmatic idea of having an embedded IE control for those times when it’s easier to switch than fight, but then I remember a few years back, when MozillaZine reported on how Netscape wasn’t going to include popup blocking in 7.0, because, well, they were a bunch of dirty popup-spewing lowlives themselves. That was when Netscape employed a mix of marketers and engineers. Now? To the extent it can even be said to exist, it’s marketers who’ve employed some contract engineers. I just don’t think I want them making a list of who can start IE wide open on my computer. Wonder how much it will cost to buy your way onto the whitelist?
Actually, from my point of view, I’d prefer my site to appear on the *blacklist*. If I understood well, this would trigger Gecko RE, would it not?
I wonder how long it is before someone figures out how to force N8 to always trigger the G mode instead of IE mode…
I’ve forgotten what I read at the time of the last prebeta-preview. Do they do some content sniffing and then choose an engine? That would be useful, but seems like it would be brutally slow: Moz has a whole ecosystem of tweak lists based on the assumption that a few milliseconds difference in when the initial reflow happens makes a huge difference; waiting to fire up the renderer until after you’ve done some parsing doesn’t seem like it would work out well at all.
I wonder what the user agent string will be like, if it’s too much like Mozilla’s UA string even when it’s in IE mode… not good.
Why would anyone actually want to use Netscape if it’s just some unholy combination of IE and gecko? I can’t imagine that winning over anyone who uses opera or mozilla. Perhaps they’ve some magic plan to get the ”what’s a browser?” crowd rushing to download it?
Sounds like they should just pack up and go home. How sad. I used to like Netscape.
It is for precisely that reason that I won’t be using that browser. I prefer to make that decision for myself. In any case, I think the only people who will actually use the Netscape browser will be those who use the Netscape internet service.
And what about whitelist websites who are good, but then use adverts servered by doubleclick etc who often spread spyware like gator through their adspace :|
Rather than fixing the problem at the root - educating people to write w3c compliant sites, netscape are coping out and opening one almighty exploitable hole in their app - regardless of whitelist or not. Good Job netscape, you’re doing a steady job of screwing your users over time and time again. Here’s to tradition!
On the test version I tried a few months ago, popups were blocked by default on all sites except Netscape.com. Which, of course, was the default home page. And there was me thinking the popup blocker was broken.
It’s asinine for a browser company to dictate a specific list of websites that are kosher to view in IE’s rendering engine and subject the rest to Gecko. (Gecko should really be used all the time, but that’s besides the point)
The choice needs to lie in the user’s hands. I don’t think I’ll waste bandwith to even try Netscape 8 out when it’s released.