BetaNews tracks AIM Express back to August 4, 2000, when it was added as a Java application for Internet Explorer 4.5+ and Netscape Navigator 4.72 and up. At that time, AIM Express was a useful concept for people wishing to access their buddy lists when they were away from their home AOL portal in places such as "the library, or in an Internet cafe."
That quote has changed very little in eight years. AIM Express is still geared toward those on the move, except "Internet Cafe" has been replaced with "Coffee Shop" in AIM's pitch. Others situations where AIM Express could be useful have arisen in recent years. Users of netbooks may wish to conserve memory, and network configurations or lack of format support may prevent others from running standalone AIM. Either way, there is still call for the truncated instant messenger.
The Flash-based AIM Express offers tabbed conversations, text messaging mode, status messages with rollover, and a wider range of browser compatibility.
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Netscape browser 8 is designed to protect users from scams and malicious code while surfing the Web.
The releasewas targeted for February 17, AOL was taking aim at Microsoft's dominant Internet Explorer Web browser, which has been the subject of many security vulnerabilities. Also, AOL is looking to piggyback on the popularity of Firefox, the open source Web browser that was released in November and has since been downloaded nearly 22 million times.
Using a list of known malicious Web sites, the new Netscape 8 browser will automatically adjust security settings to protect the user. A blacklist of Web sites will be stored on the user's PC and updated frequently. AOL is currently in negotiations with various security companies to supply the information, sources close to AOL said.
While browsing the Web, users will be alerted with a red check mark in the browser tab to sites that are known to be part of a phishing scam or that distribute spyware or other malicious code. Browser technologies such as JavaScript, cookies and ActiveX will be disabled.
Phishing scams are a prevalent type of online attack that typically combine spam e-mail messages and Web pages that look like legitimate e-commerce sites to steal sensitive information such as user names, passwords and credit card numbers.
Trusted Sites Identified
Netscape 8 will identify sites known to be trusted, such as banks, online services, and online stores, with a green check mark. These sites by default will be displayed using the IE rendering engine, with most browser technologies enabled to maximize compatibility. The trusted-sites list will come from organizations such as Truste, sources said.
Unknown sites will be coded yellow. Users can change settings on a per-site basis through a menu that is easily accessible from the browser tab.
Netscape 8 is based on Firefox, but also supports the IE browser engine. AOL released a preview version of the browser to a select group of testers in late November. The Netscape browser doesn't include the IE engine, but uses the engine that is part of Windows. As such, the Netscape 8 browser only works on Windows computers.
IE is part of Windows and is used by most Web users. Many Web sites have been designed specifically to work with the Microsoft browser and may not work correctly in browsers using other engines, including the Gecko engine in Firefox. For example, movie site Movielink.com and tax Web site HRBlock.com don't work well in Firefox.
"One of the big complaints about Internet Explorer has been security," said one person involved with Netscape 8 development who asked not to be named. "We think that is real, but we also think that a lot of the browser technologies can be used for good things as well."
In addition to the security features, the Netscape 8 beta includes enhanced support for RSS feeds, also found in Firefox, and allows users to set multiple homepages that will display in different browser-tabs.
Netscape and Firefox are not the only browsers seeking to capitalize on IE's bad security reputation. Deepnet Technologies of the United Kingdom, for example, offers a free browser based on IE, but with additional features, including one designed to protect against phishing scams. Apart from gathering known phishing sites from affiliates and antiphishing Web sites, the Deepnet browser also has a built-in phishing report facility that Netscape 8 will lack.
Netscape was the most popular browser in the early years of the Web. AOL is now breathing new life into the Netscape browser, which was marginalized after Microsoft introduced IE in the mid-1990s. The final version of Netscape 8 is due out in the second quarter and will be backed by some marketing efforts from AOL, according to sources familiar with the company's plan.
Johan Bostrom of IDG News Service contributed to this report.
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Netscape Navigator has mostly been criticized for implementing non-standard HTML markup extensions such as the BLINK tag, which is sometimes referred to as a symbol for Netscape's urge to develop extensions not standardized by the W3C. Netscape has also been criticized for following actual web standards poorly, often lagging behind or supporting them very poorly or even incorrectly. This criticism wasn't very loud during the days of its popularity as web designers then often simply developed for Netscape Navigator, but came to be an increasing annoyance to web designers who wish to provide backward compatibility, most often with Netscape Navigator 4 and Netscape Communicator, to their web sites. Today, many web masters simply do not choose to support these old versions, due to their extremely small market share and lack of standardization.
However, Netscape's own contributions to the web of this sort hasn't always been of frustration to web developers. JavaScript (which has little to do with Java) was for example submitted as a new standard to Ecma International, resulting in the ECMAScript specification. This move allowed it to be more easily supported by multiple web browsers and is today an established cross-browser scripting language, long after Netscape Navigator itself has dropped in popularity. Another example is the FRAME tag, that is also widely supported today, and even ended up becoming incorporated into official web standards such as the "HTML 4.01 Frameset" specification.
In a 2007 PC World column, the original Netscape Navigator was considered the "best tech product of all time" due to its impact on the Internet.
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More on Netscape Browser>>
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