Netscape today released version 8.0 of their browser. The user interface has been re-designed to include a number of widgets for automatically updated news and weather and shopping and the like. Old standbys like File/Edit/View have been moved off to the right.
An interesting feature of the new browser is that it evaluates each website for trustworthiness, based on AOL’s “Trust Rating” system. Whitelisted sites get a green-colored shield on the site’s tab. Blacklisted ones get a red shield and a special page with a warning that the user may be entering phishing, spyware or virus laden sites. Sites that are neither whitelisted nor blacklisted (i.e. most websites), get a yellow shield, and will render in Firefox with cookies, Java, etc. activated — but ActiveX off — for maximum security. Seems like a good idea.
The second main feature is that if a page doesn’t render or work properly, the user can flip it to IE with a single click.
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I always liked the Netscape browser, but I haven’t heard too much about it lately.
You’re right that Netscape did have good ideas in terms of security, and I think they set a high security standard for all web browsers that followed.